---
title: "Gemini API Pricing: Every Model, Tier and Promo End Date"
description: "Gemini API pricing verified 2026-10-23: every model's input, cache and output rate, when Gemini 4 Argon and Flash promo prices double, Batch/Flex/Priority tiers, long context, grounding fees and cost per task."
canonical: https://vynaris.com/blog/gemini-api-pricing
author: "Dhrumil Barot"
author_bio: "Dhrumil is an AI inference and LLM infrastructure expert. Dhrumil built Vynaris to make model access, routing and pricing simple and transparent for developers."
published: 2026-10-23
updated: 2026-10-23
---

# Gemini API Pricing: Every Model, Tier and Promo End Date

Published 2026-10-23 · By [Dhrumil Barot](https://vynaris.com/about#founder), Founder

Gemini API pricing verified 2026-10-23: every model's input, cache and output rate, when Gemini 4 Argon and Flash promo prices double, Batch/Flex/Priority tiers, long context, grounding fees and cost per task.

**TL;DR:** Gemini API pricing on 2026-10-23 runs from $0.10 input / $0.40 output per million tokens (gemini-2.5-flash-lite) to $4 / $18 (gemini-3.1-pro-preview above 200K tokens). The flagship gemini-4-argon costs $2 / $10 until 2026-11-30, then doubles to $4 / $20. Flash models double on 2027-01-01. Batch and Flex halve every rate.

Gemini API pricing is a per-token rate card from Google: each model has a USD price per 1 million input tokens, cached tokens and output tokens, with thinking tokens billed as output. Prices verified 2026-10-23 against the [Gemini Developer API pricing page](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing). On a representative task of 10,000 input tokens and 1,000 output tokens, one call costs $0.0014 on gemini-2.5-flash-lite, $0.01125 on gemini-3.8-flash, $0.03 on gemini-4-argon today and $0.06 on gemini-4-argon from December. The two promo end dates are the most important facts on this page: budgets built on October prices will be wrong by 2x within ten weeks.

## How much does the Gemini API cost per million tokens?

The Gemini API price is set per model, per 1 million tokens, on the Paid tier at Standard processing. These are the text models on the [Gemini Developer API](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing):

| Model | Input / 1M | Cached input / 1M | Output / 1M | Price change |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| gemini-4-argon | $2.00 | $0.10 | $10.00 | $4 / $0.20 / $20 from 2026-12-01 |
| gemini-3.1-pro-preview (prompt up to 200K) | $2.00 | $0.20 | $12.00 | none announced |
| gemini-3.1-pro-preview (prompt over 200K) | $4.00 | $0.40 | $18.00 | none announced |
| gemini-3.8-flash | $0.75 | $0.075 | $3.75 | $1.50 / $0.15 / $7.50 from 2027-01-01 |
| gemini-3.6-flash | $0.75 | $0.075 | $3.75 | $1.50 / $0.15 / $7.50 from 2027-01-01 |
| gemini-3.5-flash-lite | $0.30 | $0.03 | $2.50 | none announced |
| gemini-3.1-flash-lite | $0.25 | $0.025 | $1.50 | none announced |
| gemini-3-flash-preview | $0.50 | $0.05 | $3.00 | legacy |
| gemini-2.5-pro (prompt up to 200K) | $1.25 | $0.125 | $10.00 | legacy |
| gemini-2.5-pro (prompt over 200K) | $2.50 | $0.25 | $15.00 | legacy |
| gemini-2.5-flash | $0.30 | $0.03 | $2.50 | legacy |
| gemini-2.5-flash-lite | $0.10 | $0.01 | $0.40 | legacy |

Output costs 5x input on gemini-4-argon and the 3.8 Flash family, and 6x on gemini-3.1-pro-preview. gemini-3.8-flash and gemini-3.6-flash have identical prices, so there is no cost reason to stay on 3.6. gemini-3.5-flash-lite costs 20% more input and 67% more output than gemini-3.1-flash-lite; it is the newer model, not the cheaper one. Older Gemini 2.5 models stay cheap: gemini-2.5-flash now costs exactly the same as gemini-3.5-flash-lite, and gemini-2.5-flash-lite at $0.10 / $0.40 is the floor of the whole rate card. Audio input costs more on most models: $1.00 per million on gemini-2.5-flash. Check exact model IDs against our [/models catalog](https://vynaris.com/models) before switching.

## When do the Gemini 4 Argon and Flash promo prices end?

Two launch promotions end on fixed dates, and both double the price:

- **gemini-4-argon** is at promotional pricing through 2026-11-30. From 2026-12-01: input $2 to $4, output $10 to $20, cache reads $0.10 to $0.20. Batch, Flex and Priority double on the same day.
- **gemini-3.8-flash and gemini-3.6-flash** are at promotional pricing through 2026-12-31. From 2027-01-01: input $0.75 to $1.50, output $3.75 to $7.50, cache storage $0.50 to $1.00 per million tokens per hour.

On our 10,000-in / 1,000-out task, 1,000 calls cost $30 on gemini-4-argon in November and $60 in December. On gemini-3.8-flash they cost $11.25 in December and $22.50 in January. If you are benchmarking models this quarter, compare against the post-promo price, not today's. We covered the Flash cut when it was announced in [Gemini 3.6 Flash's temporary 50% price cut](https://vynaris.com/blog/gemini-36-flash-50-percent-temporary-price-cut-december-2026).

## How does Gemini context caching pricing work?

Context caching is Google's discount for repeated prompt prefixes; a cache hit bills those tokens at 10% of the input price on every current model. There are two kinds, per the [Gemini caching docs](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/caching):

- **Implicit caching** is on by default for Gemini 2.5 and newer. You configure nothing; savings apply when a request reuses a recent prefix. The minimum prefix is 4,096 tokens on gemini-4-argon, gemini-3.8-flash, gemini-3.6-flash and gemini-3.1-pro-preview, and 2,048 tokens on gemini-2.5-flash and gemini-2.5-pro. Cache hits appear in the response's cached token count in `usage`.
- **Explicit caching** lets you create a named cache with a TTL. You pay the cached read price plus storage per million tokens per hour: $0.50 on 3.8 Flash (promo), $1.00 on the Flash-Lite models, $4.50 on 2.5 Pro and 3.1 Pro Preview. gemini-4-argon supports implicit caching only.

Worked example: a 50,000-token system prompt on gemini-3.8-flash costs $0.0375 per call uncached and $0.00375 as a cache hit. Holding it in an explicit cache for one hour costs 0.05M x $0.50 = $0.025 in storage, so explicit caching pays for itself from the first hit in that hour. On gemini-3.1-pro-preview the same hour of storage costs $0.225, which needs about 3 hits to recover against the $0.10 uncached input cost. Put stable content (instructions, tool schemas, documents) at the start of the prompt and variable content at the end. More on the math in [prompt caching break-even](https://vynaris.com/blog/prompt-caching-break-even-2026).

## How much do Batch, Flex and Priority change the price?

Gemini has four processing tiers on the Paid plan, and the tier is a bigger lever than model choice within a family:

| Tier | Price vs Standard | Latency | Use for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Standard | 1x | interactive | default |
| Batch | 0.5x | up to 24 hours, async job | evals, backfills, bulk extraction |
| Flex | 0.5x | variable, best effort | background agents, retries are acceptable |
| Priority | 1.8x | lowest, protected capacity | user-facing paths that cannot shed load |

Flex is a preview tier that runs on "sheddable" capacity: you set `service_tier` to `flex` on a normal request, per the [Flex inference docs](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/flex-inference), and accept that requests may be slower or rejected at peak. Priority is 1.8x Standard: gemini-3.8-flash Priority is $1.35 / $6.75, gemini-4-argon Priority is $3.60 / $18. A gotcha on gemini-3.1-pro-preview and gemini-2.5-pro: Batch halves input and output, but cache reads stay at the Standard price. Our comparison of [OpenAI and Anthropic batch APIs](https://vynaris.com/blog/batch-apis-openai-vs-anthropic-when-latency-is-free) applies the same "latency is free" test.

## What does long context cost on Gemini Pro models?

Long-context pricing is a higher per-token rate that applies when a prompt exceeds 200,000 tokens, on gemini-3.1-pro-preview and gemini-2.5-pro. On 3.1 Pro Preview input doubles from $2 to $4 and output rises 50%, from $12 to $18. On 2.5 Pro input doubles from $1.25 to $2.50 and output rises from $10 to $15.

The cliff matters because it is priced on the prompt size of the request. A 190,000-token prompt with 2,000 output tokens on gemini-3.1-pro-preview costs $0.38 + $0.024 = $0.404. A 210,000-token prompt costs $0.84 + $0.036 = $0.876, more than double for 10% more context. If you are near the line, trim retrieval to stay under 200K or split the job. gemini-4-argon and the Flash models have no long-context surcharge on the current card. We compared this cliff with OpenAI's in [GPT-5.6 long-context cliff vs Gemini 200K](https://vynaris.com/blog/gpt-56-long-context-cliff-vs-gemini-200k-cost).

## How are thinking tokens billed?

Thinking tokens are billed as output tokens at the model's output rate; Google's table labels every output price "including thinking tokens". A gemini-4-argon call that writes 300 visible tokens after 3,000 thinking tokens is billed for 3,300 output tokens: $0.033 at promo pricing, $0.066 from December. Thinking is the main reason measured Gemini bills exceed back-of-envelope estimates. Gemini 2.5 Flash introduced thinking budgets; cap them on tasks that don't need reasoning. See [the reasoning token tax](https://vynaris.com/blog/reasoning-token-tax-worked-bills) for worked bills.

## What does a Gemini API task actually cost?

Cost per task is the number that matters for a budget, not the per-token rate. Assumptions: 10,000 input tokens (system prompt, context, question), 1,000 output tokens including thinking, no caching, Standard tier. Edit them for your workload: cost = input/1M x input price + output/1M x output price.

| Model | Cost per call | Cost per 1,000 calls | After promo ends |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| gemini-2.5-flash-lite | $0.0014 | $1.40 | same |
| gemini-3.1-flash-lite | $0.0040 | $4.00 | same |
| gemini-3.5-flash-lite | $0.0055 | $5.50 | same |
| gemini-2.5-flash | $0.0055 | $5.50 | same |
| gemini-3-flash-preview | $0.0080 | $8.00 | same |
| gemini-3.8-flash | $0.01125 | $11.25 | $22.50 (2027-01-01) |
| gemini-2.5-pro | $0.0225 | $22.50 | same |
| gemini-4-argon | $0.0300 | $30.00 | $60.00 (2026-12-01) |
| gemini-3.1-pro-preview | $0.0320 | $32.00 | same |

Two results stand out. From 2026-12-01, gemini-4-argon at $60 per 1,000 calls costs nearly twice gemini-3.1-pro-preview at $32 on this shape. And from January, gemini-3.8-flash at $22.50 costs the same as gemini-2.5-pro. Run your own token counts through the [Vynaris cost calculator](https://vynaris.com/calculator) to compare across providers. With a 50% cache hit rate on the input, subtract 45% of the input cost; on Batch or Flex, halve the whole row.

## What other charges appear on a Gemini API bill?

Tool calls and non-text modalities carry their own prices on top of tokens:

- **Grounding with Google Search** (Gemini 3 and newer): 5,000 free search requests per month shared across models, then $14 per 1,000 requests. One user prompt can trigger several billed searches. On Gemini 2.5: 1,500 free requests per day, then $35 per 1,000 grounded prompts.
- **Grounding with Google Maps**: 5,000 free per month on Gemini 3+, then $14 per 1,000.
- **Code execution, URL context, computer use**: no tool fee; generated code, results and fetched pages are billed as normal tokens.
- **File Search**: embeddings at $0.15 per 1M tokens, retrieved chunks billed as input.
- **gemini-embedding-2**: $0.20 per 1M text tokens.
- **Image generation** with gemini-nano-banana-2.1: $30 per 1M image output tokens, which is $0.0336 per 1K image, $0.0504 per 2K and $0.113 per 4K.

At $14 per 1,000, grounding adds $0.014 per search. That is more than an entire gemini-3.8-flash call on our task shape, so a grounded Flash agent can spend more on search than on tokens.

## Is the Gemini API free, and how do billing tiers work?

The Gemini API has a Free tier with rate-limited access to most Flash and Flash-Lite models, but not gemini-4-argon or gemini-3.1-pro-preview. On the Free tier Google uses your content to improve its products; on the Paid tier it does not. Per the [Gemini billing docs](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing), moving to Paid means linking a Cloud billing account and prepaying at least $5 in credits.

Paid accounts move up usage tiers automatically by cumulative spend, and each tier has a billing cap and a spend-based rate limit per 10 minutes:

| Usage tier | Qualifies at | Billing cap | Spend limit per 10 min |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Tier 1 | paid account | $250 | $10 |
| Tier 2 | $100 paid + 3 days | $2,000 | $50 |
| Tier 3 | $1,000 paid + 30 days | $20,000 to $100,000+ | $200 |

The spend limit is the one that surprises teams: a Tier 1 project that burns more than $10 in 10 minutes gets `429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED`, even under its RPM and TPM limits. Rate limits apply per project, not per API key, so splitting keys does not raise them. Running a batch backfill on Standard can hit this; Batch jobs have their own enqueued-token limits instead.

## Is Vertex AI priced the same as the Gemini API?

Vertex AI is Google Cloud's enterprise route to the same Gemini models, billed through a Google Cloud account instead of AI Studio prepay, and it publishes its own rate card. This page covers the Gemini Developer API only; check the Vertex AI pricing page before assuming parity. Vertex adds provisioned throughput, regional endpoints and committed-use options, and enterprise volume discounts are negotiated through Google Cloud sales. Choose Vertex when you need VPC controls, data residency or an existing Cloud commitment; choose the Gemini Developer API for the fastest start.

## When is the expensive Gemini model worth it?

gemini-4-argon is worth it when a Flash model needs retries or extra agent turns to finish. After both promos end on 2027-01-01, Argon output at $20 costs 2.7x gemini-3.8-flash output at $7.50; if 3.8 Flash needs more than about 2.7x the tokens or attempts on the same task, Argon is cheaper per completed task. That happens on long-horizon coding and multi-step research. It rarely happens on extraction, classification, translation or summarization, where gemini-2.5-flash-lite at 1/50th of Argon's December output price is the right default. Measure tokens and success rate per task on your own eval set before routing by sticker price.

## Where Vynaris fits

Vynaris is an OpenAI-compatible API that routes each request to the cheapest model that can handle it, across Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and open-weight providers. When Google's promo prices end, routing rules re-rate instead of your code changing. See [Vynaris pricing](https://vynaris.com/pricing). If every request needs Pro-level reasoning, or every request is trivial, you don't need a router; pin one model.

## FAQ

**How much does the Gemini API cost per 1,000 tokens?**

Divide the per-million price by 1,000. gemini-3.8-flash costs $0.00075 per 1,000 input tokens and $0.00375 per 1,000 output tokens through 2026-12-31. gemini-4-argon costs $0.002 and $0.01 through 2026-11-30.

**What is the cheapest Gemini API model?**

gemini-2.5-flash-lite at $0.10 input / $0.40 output per 1M tokens. Batch or Flex halves that to $0.05 / $0.20.

**Is the Gemini API free?**

Partly. The Free tier offers rate-limited access to Flash and Flash-Lite models, and Google may use that content to improve its products. gemini-4-argon and gemini-3.1-pro-preview require the Paid tier and a $5 minimum prepay.

**How much does Gemini 3 Pro cost?**

The current Pro model is gemini-3.1-pro-preview: $2 input / $12 output per 1M tokens for prompts up to 200K, and $4 / $18 above that.

**Does Gemini charge for thinking tokens?**

Yes. Thinking tokens are billed at the output rate on every model.

**How much is Gemini 2.5 Pro?**

$1.25 input / $10 output per 1M tokens for prompts up to 200K tokens; $2.50 / $15 above 200K. Batch halves both.

## About the author

[Dhrumil Barot](https://vynaris.com/about#founder), Founder. Dhrumil is an AI inference and LLM infrastructure expert. Dhrumil built Vynaris to make model access, routing and pricing simple and transparent for developers. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bdhrumil) · [X](https://x.com/fyidhrumil)