The closest alternative to Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is DeepSeek V3.2 — comparable intelligence (24.7 vs 25.0); for a cheaper option, GPT-5.6 Luna runs $0.100/M vs $0.250/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
DeepSeek V3.2 is the closest alternative to Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, with an Intelligence Index of 24.7 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores 25.0) at $0.269 per million input tokens.
Yes — GPT-5.6 Luna costs $0.100 per million input tokens versus $0.250 for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.