Extend vs Gemini 3.5 Flash
Two systems that are excellent on a single page and poor on twenty. Gemini 3.5 Flash is the more accurate of the two on short documents and scans, and it costs a fraction of a cent. Extend holds up somewhat better on multi-page documents and much better as a product. Neither should be trusted with long registers. Gemini fails outright, and Extend returns a fraction.
Gemini is Google's fast general model called with a file and a field list. Extend is a document platform with Studio and workflows. They came fourth and sixth, and on single-page documents the order flips. Gemini was second only to DocuPipe on forms, receipts, and photographed or rotated scans, and it returned more documents completely correct than any system in the test. Extend was close behind and slightly better on handwriting.
On multi-page statements the two were near level. On long catalogs and directories both were poor, but Gemini's failure was total, the lowest average in the test with runs that failed outright, while Extend returned a fraction of the entries. On non-English documents they were level. On Hebrew and Arabic layouts Gemini was clearly ahead.
On resilience neither has anything to tune, and both fail silently on length. Gemini's cliff is steeper. Extend also stumbled once on a plain export file. We wouldn't put either on a corpus with long documents. Between the two, Extend degrades more gracefully.
On price Gemini is the cheapest thing we tested, well under a cent per page with a free tier for development. Extend is about six cents a page pay-as-you-go with 10,000 free credits, five cents on its $500 Scale plan. Gemini's price leaves out everything below.
Extend's product is the strongest developer experience among the specialized systems we looked at: Studio, an evaluation suite, workflows, run and request logs, a review agent, webhooks with delivery logs, a test environment, and SDKs in four languages, all on the free tier, with a HIPAA BAA as a paid add-on and no SOC 2 stated on the pricing page. Gemini offers a good general API with the largest PDF page limit of the raw models, a Files API and structured output, and no dashboard, webhooks, document jobs, or retention controls, with a data policy that differs between free and paid tiers.
So Gemini for high-volume single-page work with your own pipeline where cost decides. Extend for the same documents when you want a product, evaluation tooling, and webhooks without building anything, and for anything that occasionally runs to a few pages.
Single-page and short business documents when you want a complete product with evaluation tooling and webhooks on the free tier.
High-volume single-page work with your own pipeline where cost per page is the deciding factor.
How it scores, area by area
The accuracy score comes from the benchmark. Every other score is ours, with the reason written next to it. We use the same weights on every review and comparison.
| Area | Extend | Gemini 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy35% of total | 8.0Ranked 4th of 8 systems on the benchmark. | 7.3Ranked 6th of 8 systems on the benchmark. |
| Resilience15% of total | 5.0One mode and no tuning, but a hard cliff on long documents and one odd miss on a plain export file, all silent. | 3.0Several runs failed outright and the long-document average was the lowest in the test; excellent one day and empty the next depending on page count. |
| Price15% of total | 7.0About $0.06 per page pay-as-you-go, $0.05 on the $500 Scale plan, no minimum, and a generous free tier. | 10.0$1.50 and $9 per million tokens plus a free tier; well under a cent per page. |
| Getting started10% of total | 9.0Studio, evaluation suite, workflows and a test environment on a free tier of 10,000 credits with no card; schemas are authored by hand in Studio. | 4.0No document product, though the free tier makes trying it trivial. |
| API and integration10% of total | 9.0Webhooks with delivery logs, five APIs, four SDKs, request logs and a test environment, all on the free tier. | 5.0Strong general SDKs, the largest PDF page limit of the direct models, a Files API and structured output; no document jobs or webhooks. |
| Data control7.5% of total | 7.0Zero and custom retention policies offered; custom agreements on Scale. | 4.0Platform policy only, and it differs between the free and paid tiers. |
| Compliance7.5% of total | 5.0HIPAA BAA is a paid add-on; SOC 2 not stated on the pricing page. | 6.0Platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline is your responsibility. |
| Overallweighted | 7.3weighted score out of 10 | 6.2weighted score out of 10 |
How each area is scored
- Accuracy (35%). The benchmark result, on a 0 to 10 scale.
- Resilience (15%). Does it just work? Fewer modes to choose, no tuning to reach the ranked result, no runs that fail outright, and no documents that come back quietly empty. Informed by the benchmark, judged by us.
- Price (15%). Published cost per page for parse plus extraction, cheapest scoring highest. Unpublished pricing is marked down.
- Getting started (10%). How far you get without a sales call: a dashboard, a free tier with no card, help authoring schemas, a test environment.
- API and integration (10%). Webhooks and which tier they are on, SDKs, no-code connectors, whether the API is built around document jobs at all.
- Data control (7.5%). Deletion controls, scheduled retention, zero-retention availability and on which tier, choice of region.
- Compliance (7.5%). Certifications stated on public pages: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA with a BAA, GDPR, private deployment options.
By document type
Average accuracy on each group of benchmark documents, both systems on the same files. Every document and score is on the evidence page.
| Document type | Extend | Gemini 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Short forms, invoices, receiptsone page · 30 documents | 88.8% Good | 94.1% Good |
| Scans and photosimages, not PDFs · 7 documents | 86.9% Good | 95.5% Strong |
| Statements, filings, reports2 to 5 pages · 21 documents | 86.7% Good | 87.5% Good |
| Non-English documents12 languages · 25 documents | 69.3% Mixed | 68.9% Mixed |
| Long registers, catalogs, directories6 pages and up · 21 documents | 61.7% Mixed | 28.3% Weak |
Price, product, and policies
Full reviews: Extend, Gemini 3.5 Flash.
| Extend | Gemini 3.5 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Credits. Extraction costs 3 credits per page plus 2 for the automatic parse, so 5 credits per page end to end. | Per token through the Gemini API. No document-specific product or plan. |
| Entry price | Pay-as-you-go is free to start with 10,000 credits, then $0.0125 per credit. Scale is $500/month for 50,000 credits at $0.01 per additional credit. | $1.50 per million input tokens, $9 per million output tokens on the paid tier. |
| Cost per page | About $0.06 per page pay-as-you-go, $0.05 on Scale. | Depends on page size and output length; typically well under a cent to a couple of cents per page, the cheapest of the direct models. |
| Free tier | Yes. 10,000 credits, roughly 2,000 pages, on signup. | Yes. A rate-limited free tier for development. |
| Pay as you go | Yes. | Yes. Pure usage billing. |
| Dashboard | Yes. Studio to build and test processors, an Evaluation suite for regression testing, Workflows that chain classify, split and extract, run logs, a Review Agent and human review, and a built-in test environment. | No document product. AI Studio for trying prompts; upload, review and results tooling is yours to build. |
| Webhooks | Yes, with webhook endpoint and delivery logs in the dashboard. | None for document jobs. You run the pipeline. |
| API and SDKs | Python, TypeScript, Java, Go and REST on a date-versioned API. Parse, Extract, Classify, Split and Edit APIs; API request logs in the dashboard. | Official SDKs in Python, JavaScript, Go and others. PDF input up to 1,000 pages or 50 MB, a Files API with 48-hour storage, structured output. |
| Data retention | Zero and custom data retention policies offered; custom retention agreements on Scale and up. | Governed by Google's API data policies, which differ between the free and paid tiers. Nothing document-specific. |
| Compliance | HIPAA BAA as a paid add-on on Scale. SOC 2 not stated on the pricing page. | Google's platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline around it is your responsibility. |
We checked these against the vendors' own pricing and documentation pages on 2026-09-11. Sources: Extend: www.extend.ai, docs.extend.ai; Gemini 3.5 Flash: ai.google.dev. Prices change, so confirm before you budget.
Frequently asked
Is Extend more accurate than Gemini?
Overall yes, 80.28% to 72.98% in our benchmark, because Gemini collapses on long documents. On single-page documents and scans Gemini was ahead.
Is Gemini cheaper than Extend?
Yes, by a wide margin. Well under a cent per page against Extend's five to six cents. Gemini includes no document product. Extend includes Studio, evaluations, workflows, and webhooks.
Scores are macro-average field accuracy from the DocuBench 0.2.0, 72-document run. Every document, answer key, and raw extraction is open in the explorer; the scoring rules are on the methodology page, and the replication kit re-runs the scorer. A document a system could not process scores zero rather than being dropped.