Gemini Flash Price & Gemini API Pricing (2026): Rates

The Gemini Flash price is the number most people want first: Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 input / $3.75 output per million tokens on the paid tier through December 31, 2026, and is free of charge on the free tier. Beyond Flash, Gemini API pricing is pay-as-you-go per million tokens, with a free tier for some models and a paid tier for production. As of November 10, 2026, Google's flagship Gemini 4 Argon costs $2 input / $10 output per million tokens through November 30, 2026, then $4 / $20 from December 1. Flash doubles to $1.50 / $7.50 on January 1, 2027.

That makes the Gemini API one of the few where the headline price is about to change twice in two months, so dates matter. This guide lists the official rates for the main models, explains the free tier, Batch and grounding fees, and shows how to estimate a Gemini API bill. Every figure comes from Google's official Gemini Developer API pricing page, checked on November 10, 2026, in US dollars.

Gemini API vs a Gemini subscription

The Gemini API is for developers calling Gemini models from code through Google AI Studio or the Gemini API. It is billed per token.

A Gemini app subscription is different. Google's plans page lists Google AI Plus at $4.99/month, Google AI Pro at $19.99/month and Google AI Ultra tiers at $99.99 and $199.99/month, as checked on November 10, 2026. Those plans are for the Gemini app and other Google products, not API usage. For app comparisons, see Gemini vs ChatGPT and Claude vs Gemini.

Gemini model pricing at a glance

These are standard paid-tier rates for text input, per million tokens, from Google's pricing page.

Google describes the models this way:

• Gemini 4 Argon: "Our flagship reasoning model, built for complex software engineering, deep mathematical and scientific problem solving, autonomous multi-step agents, and long-decode generation up to 1M tokens."
• Gemini 3.8 Flash: "Our most intelligent Flash model, engineered for long-horizon software engineering, autonomous agents, and complex enterprise workflows."
• Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.1 Flash-Lite: "A cost-efficient model, optimized for high-volume agentic tasks, translation, and simple data processing."
• Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview: "Our 3rd generation Pro model, built for multimodal understanding, agentic capabilities, and vibe-coding."

Gemini 4 Argon pricing

Gemini 4 Argon is not available on the free tier. Google notes that "every token the model processes is counted and billed, including thinking tokens".

Item	Through Nov 30, 2026	From Dec 1, 2026
Input	$2.00	$4.00
Output (incl. thinking)	$10.00	$20.00
Context caching	$0.10	$0.20
Batch input / output	$1.00 / $5.00	$2.00 / $10.00

Argon supports implicit caching only; explicit caching is not supported. If you are budgeting for December onward, use the right-hand column.

Gemini Flash price: 3.8 Flash and Flash-Lite

Gemini 3.8 Flash is the main mid-priced model. On the paid tier it is $0.75 input and $3.75 output through December 31, 2026, then $1.50 / $7.50 from January 1, 2027. Context caching is $0.075 per million tokens plus $0.50 per million tokens per hour of storage, both doubling on January 1. Batch is half price: $0.375 / $1.875.

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is $0.30 input and $2.50 output, with context caching at $0.03. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is $0.25 for text, image and video input ($0.50 for audio) and $1.50 output.

Gemini Pro pricing

Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview has two price bands by prompt length: $2 / $12 for prompts up to 200K tokens and $4 / $18 above that. Context caching is $0.20 (≤200K) or $0.40 (>200K), plus $4.50 per million tokens per hour of storage. It is not on the free tier, though Google says it can be tested in Google AI Studio.

The Gemini API free tier

Google's free tier is "for developers and small projects getting started with the Gemini API". Per the official page:

• Free input and output tokens on supported models, including Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.1 Flash-Lite.
• Limited access to certain models — Gemini 4 Argon and 3.1 Pro Preview are not on it.
• Content is used to improve Google's products on the free tier. On the paid tier, it is not.
• Grounding with Google Search is not available on the free tier for these models.

If your prompts include customer or confidential data, the free tier's data-use term is the main reason to move to paid.

Batch, caching and grounding

• Batch API: Google lists a 50% cost reduction for Batch on the paid tier. The per-model Batch rates above confirm it.
• Context caching: billed per million cached tokens, plus a storage price per million tokens per hour on models that support explicit caching.
• Grounding with Google Search: 5,000 free search requests per month, shared across all Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000 requests, with a daily cap of 1,500 requests. Google notes one customer request may trigger several searches, each charged.
• Grounding with Google Maps: 5,000 free requests per month, then $14 per 1,000.

How to estimate a Gemini API bill

1. Count tokens for a typical request on the model you will use. Include thinking tokens in your output estimate — Google bills them as output.
2. Pick the date range. Use Argon's December rates and Flash's January rates if you are budgeting ahead.
3. Multiply input and output tokens by the rates, then by monthly volume.
4. Add grounding if you use Google Search, after the free 5,000 per month.

Worked example (arithmetic only, not a measured workload): 3,000 input tokens and 800 output tokens on Gemini 3.8 Flash at today's paid rate costs (3,000 ÷ 1,000,000 × $0.75) + (800 ÷ 1,000,000 × $3.75) = $0.00225 + $0.003 = $0.00525. At 1,000 requests a day for 30 days, that is about $157.50 a month, or about $315 at the January 2027 rate. On Gemini 4 Argon, the same traffic is $0.014 per request (about $420 a month) through November 30 and double from December 1.

Try your own prompt in our AI token calculator.

Gemini API vs OpenAI API vs Claude API

This compares list prices only, not quality. Full sheets are in OpenAI API pricing and Claude API pricing. For low-cost options from Chinese providers, see Chinese AI models, and for other assistants, our ChatGPT alternatives guide. If you are building, see AI tools for web development.

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