The closest alternative to Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview is Ling-2.6-1T — comparable intelligence (33.6 vs 33.5); for a cheaper option, MiMo-V2.5 runs $0.140/M vs $0.250/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Ling-2.6-1T is the closest alternative to Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview, with an Intelligence Index of 33.6 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview scores 33.5) at $0.075 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiMo-V2.5 costs $0.140 per million input tokens versus $0.250 for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.