Gemini API pricing 2026: 4 Carbon and 4 Argon at $2/$10 until Dec 1, 3.8 Flash $0.75

Updated: November 11, 2026

Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon both cost $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens on the Gemini API through November 30, 2026, and both move to $4.00 and $20.00 from December 1, 2026. Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 input and $3.75 output until December 31, 2026, then $1.50 and $7.50 from January 1, 2027. The cheapest current text model is Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite at $0.25 input and $1.50 output, with Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite slightly above it at $0.30 and $2.50.

Gemini 4 Carbon is the new entry on the price list. Google opened it to all paying Gemini API developers on November 10, 2026, after a restricted launch for cyber defenders, and its official developer page gives it exactly the same per-token prices as Gemini 4 Argon. The two models differ in how many tokens they spend, because Google says Carbon uses more thinking tokens per turn, so the same price per token produces a higher bill per task.

The figures below come from Google's official Gemini Developer API pricing page, the Gemini 4 Carbon developer page, the Gemini 4 Carbon announcement, the release notes and the deprecations page, all checked on November 11, 2026. Prices are in US dollars per one million tokens at the Standard tier unless a row says otherwise, and output prices include thinking tokens. The sections cover every main model, the batch, flex, priority and contributor tiers, caching and grounding, the free tier, and a monthly cost example for each model.

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GEMINI API PRICING AT A GLANCE IN NOVEMBER 2026.

Google bills the Gemini API separately for input and output tokens, with optional context caching, batch and flex discounts, a priority tier at a higher rate, and per-request charges for grounding with Google Search. The table lists the Standard text prices for the models most developers choose between today.

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Model (API ID)	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Free tier	Scheduled change
Gemini 4 Carbon (gemini-4-carbon)	$2.00	$10.00	No	$4.00 / $20.00 from Dec 1, 2026
Gemini 4 Argon (gemini-4-argon)	$2.00	$10.00	No	$4.00 / $20.00 from Dec 1, 2026
Gemini 3.8 Flash (gemini-3.8-flash)	$0.75	$3.75	Yes	$1.50 / $7.50 from Jan 1, 2027
Gemini 3.6 Flash (gemini-3.6-flash)	$0.75	$3.75	Yes	$1.50 / $7.50 from Jan 1, 2027
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, prompts up to 200K	$2.00	$12.00	No	None listed
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, prompts over 200K	$4.00	$18.00	No	None listed
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (gemini-3.5-flash-lite)	$0.30	$2.50	Yes	None listed
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (gemini-3.1-flash-lite)	$0.25	$1.50	Yes	Shutdown date May 7, 2027
Gemini 2.5 Pro, prompts up to 200K	$1.25	$10.00	Limited access	None listed
Gemini 2.5 Flash	$0.30	$2.50	Limited access	None listed

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Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite charges $0.50 per million audio input tokens instead of $0.25, and Gemini 2.5 Flash charges $1.00 for audio input. Google limits access to the 2.5 models to projects that used them before and points new projects to Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or Gemini 3.8 Flash.

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GEMINI 4 CARBON API PRICING AND ACCESS.

Gemini 4 Carbon (model ID gemini-4-carbon) is available on the paid tier of the Gemini API and in Google AI Studio, and Google's announcement also lists the paid tier in Android Studio. Google AI Ultra subscribers can try it in AI Studio and in Google Antigravity, Google's agent development platform. The developer page states that Carbon is not available on the free tier.

The introductory Standard price of $2.00 input and $10.00 output per million tokens runs through November 30, 2026, and Google's announcement and developer page both list $4.00 input and $20.00 output from December 1, 2026. Cached input costs $0.10 per million tokens until November 30 and $0.20 afterwards, with implicit caching only: explicit caches created with the caches API are not supported, and implicit caching switches on automatically for prompts of at least 4,096 tokens. As of November 11, Gemini 4 Carbon does not yet appear on the main Gemini API pricing page, and Google has not published batch, flex or priority rates for it.

Carbon shares Argon's 1,048,576-token window, which covers input, thinking and output together. Synchronous responses stop at 65,536 tokens, while background mode can continue up to the full window minus the input. The model offers low, medium and high thinking levels with medium as the default, and it ignores temperature, top_p and top_k. Google describes Argon as faster with lower token spend per turn and Carbon as the stronger reasoning model that spends more thinking tokens, which are billed as output. Our report on Gemini 4 Carbon's opening to API developers and AI Ultra covers the launch details.

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GEMINI 4 ARGON PRICING DOUBLES ON DECEMBER 1, 2026.

Gemini 4 Argon became generally available on October 13, 2026, and Google describes it as its most capable model for complex coding, agentic, math and science tasks. The current Standard price of $2.00 input and $10.00 output per million tokens is introductory and runs through November 30, 2026, and the pricing page lists $4.00 input and $20.00 output from December 1, 2026.

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Gemini 4 Argon tier	Through Nov 30, 2026 (input / output)	From Dec 1, 2026 (input / output)
Standard	$2.00 / $10.00	$4.00 / $20.00
Batch and Flex	$1.00 / $5.00	$2.00 / $10.00
Priority	$3.60 / $18.00	$7.20 / $36.00
Cached input, Standard (implicit only)	$0.10	$0.20

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Gemini 4 Argon supports implicit caching only and is not available on the free tier. Google states that every processed token is billed, including thinking tokens and the internal tool instructions and function declarations added when grounding is used, so Argon's real cost per request depends on how much the model reasons before answering.

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GEMINI 3.8 FLASH PRICING AND THE JANUARY 2027 INCREASE.

Gemini 3.8 Flash has a 1 million token context window and up to 64,000 output tokens. Its Standard price of $0.75 input and $3.75 output per million tokens applies through December 31, 2026, and from January 1, 2027 the pricing page lists $1.50 input and $7.50 output, so any budget built on today's rates should plan for the Flash line to double from the first invoice of 2027.

Batch and flex requests cost half the Standard rate, $0.375 input and $1.875 output through the end of 2026 and $0.75 and $3.75 afterwards. The priority tier costs $1.35 input and $6.75 output in 2026 and $2.70 and $13.50 from January. Context caching costs $0.075 per million cached tokens in 2026 and $0.15 in 2027, plus storage of $0.50 per million tokens per hour that rises to $1.00. Gemini 3.6 Flash, which Google now labels its previous generation Flash model, carries the same prices and the same January change, and requests to the deprecated gemini-3.7-flash and gemini-3.5-flash IDs are routed to Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.6 Flash respectively.

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GEMINI 3.1 PRO PREVIEW LONG-CONTEXT PRICE BANDS.

Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview stays on the price list with a two-band schedule tied to prompt length. Prompts of up to 200,000 tokens cost $2.00 input and $12.00 output per million tokens, and longer prompts cost $4.00 input and $18.00 output. Batch and flex rates are $1.00 and $6.00 in the lower band and $2.00 and $9.00 above 200,000 tokens, while the priority tier costs $3.60 and $21.60 in the lower band and $7.20 and $32.40 in the upper one.

Context caching for Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview costs $0.20 per million cached tokens in the lower band and $0.40 above it, with storage at $4.50 per million tokens per hour, or $8.10 on the priority tier. That storage rate is several times higher than on the Flash models, so long-lived caches on the Pro preview should be sized carefully. The model has no free tier and no announced shutdown date.

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GEMINI 3.5 FLASH-LITE AND 3.1 FLASH-LITE LOW-COST PRICING.

The two Flash-Lite models are the low-cost end of the Gemini API. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs $0.30 per million input tokens for text, image, video and audio, and $2.50 per million output tokens, with batch at $0.15 and $1.25 and priority at $0.54 and $4.50. Its context caching costs $0.03 per million cached tokens plus $1.00 per million tokens per hour of storage, and no dated price change is listed.

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is cheaper on paper at $0.25 input for text, image and video, $0.50 for audio, and $1.50 output. Batch and flex halve those prices to $0.125, $0.25 and $0.75, and caching costs $0.025 per million tokens for text, image and video with $1.00 per million tokens per hour of storage on the Standard tier. Google has set May 7, 2027 as the shutdown date for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite and names Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite as its replacement, so the lower price comes with a limited lifespan.

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GEMINI 2.5 PRO AND 2.5 FLASH: LIMITED ACCESS AND THE DECEMBER 1 REROUTING NOTICE.

Gemini 2.5 Pro still costs $1.25 input and $10.00 output for prompts up to 200,000 tokens and $2.50 and $15.00 above that, and Gemini 2.5 Flash costs $0.30 input for text, image and video, $1.00 for audio, and $2.50 output. The pricing page lists both on the free tier, but Google's model and deprecations pages say access to the 2.5 models is limited to users who have actively used them in the past.

On November 2, 2026, Google announced that from December 1, 2026 requests to gemini-2.5-pro would be routed to Gemini 3.8 Flash and requests to gemini-2.5-flash to Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, billed at the target models' rates, as our report on the December 1 Gemini 2.5 rerouting describes. When we checked on November 11, the versions of Google's pricing, release notes and deprecations pages that loaded did not show that notice and still described the 2.5 models as not deprecated, so we could not reconfirm the change today. Developers who still call either ID should check the Gemini API release notes in their own console and move to gemini-3.8-flash or gemini-3.5-flash-lite before December 1 in any case after testing their prompts on the newer models.

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GEMINI API BATCH, FLEX, PRIORITY, CONTRIBUTOR, CACHING AND GROUNDING COSTS.

Batch and flex requests are billed at half the Standard rate on Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview and both Flash-Lite models, which makes them the first lever for offline jobs such as document processing or evaluation runs that do not need an immediate answer. The priority tier costs 1.8 times the Standard rate on the same models in exchange for priority inference. The pricing page also lists a Contributor tier at the batch price for Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite; it is an invite-only private preview, and content sent through it may be used to improve Google's products.

Grounding with Google Search on Gemini 3 and newer models includes 5,000 free search requests a month, shared across all those models, and then costs $14 per 1,000 requests. Grounding with Google Maps on the same models follows the same 5,000 free requests a month and $14 per 1,000 queries. The Gemini 2.5 models use an older scheme: Gemini 2.5 Pro includes 1,500 free grounded prompts a day for Search and then charges $35 per 1,000 grounded prompts, and 10,000 free Maps requests a day before $25 per 1,000.

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GEMINI LIVE, TTS AND IMAGE MODEL PRICING.

Gemini 3.8 Live, Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking and Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview share one price list. Text input costs $0.75 per million tokens, audio input $3.00 per million tokens or $0.005 per minute, and image or video input $1.00 per million tokens or $0.002 per minute. Output costs $4.50 per million text tokens and $12.00 per million audio tokens or $0.018 per minute, and the models are free of charge on the free tier.

Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS costs $0.50 per million text input tokens and $9.00 per million audio output tokens through December 31, 2026, doubling to $1.00 and $18.00 in January 2027, and Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS costs $0.50 and $6.00, doubling to $1.00 and $12.00; batch halves both. The older Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS Preview, Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview TTS and Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview TTS shut down on November 17, 2026, with the 3.8 TTS models as replacements. On the image side, Gemini Nano Banana 2.1 charges $1.50 input, $7.50 text output and $30.00 per million image output tokens, half that in batch, and Gemini 3 Pro Image charges $2.00 input, $12.00 text output and $120.00 per million image output tokens, which the pricing page equates to $0.134 per 1K or 2K image and $0.24 per 4K image.

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GEMINI API FREE TIER: WHICH MODELS ARE FREE AND WHAT IT COSTS IN DATA.

The free tier covers Gemini 3.8 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, the Gemini 3.8 Live models and the 3.8 TTS models, with input and output free of charge within the free-tier rate limits. Gemini 4 Carbon, Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Gemini Nano Banana 2.1 and Gemini 3 Pro Image are not available on the free tier, and batch and flex are paid-only on the Flash models.

The trade-off is data use. Google's pricing page marks free-tier content as used to improve its products and paid-tier content as not used for that purpose. Since October 26, 2026, new paid-tier projects using the Generate Content API also store requests by default, with an opt-out per request or in the Logs and Datasets settings. Developers who want to try the models without writing code can use Google AI Studio, which our guide to Google AI Studio pricing and free access explains, and the Gemini API rate limits and spend caps decide how much traffic each paid tier can send.

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GEMINI API COST EXAMPLE: 10M INPUT AND 2M OUTPUT TOKENS A MONTH.

To compare the models on one workload, the table assumes a month with 10 million input tokens and 2 million output tokens at Standard rates, with every prompt under 200,000 tokens and no caching or grounding. The batch column applies the official 50 percent batch rates where Google publishes them. The arithmetic was run in Python on the official prices listed above.

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Model and period	Standard cost per month	Batch cost per month
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite	$5.50	$2.75
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite	$8.00	$4.00
Gemini 2.5 Flash	$8.00	$4.00
Gemini 3.8 Flash (through Dec 31, 2026)	$15.00	$7.50
Gemini 3.8 Flash (from Jan 1, 2027)	$30.00	$15.00
Gemini 2.5 Pro	$32.50	$16.25
Gemini 4 Argon (through Nov 30, 2026)	$40.00	$20.00
Gemini 4 Carbon (through Nov 30, 2026)	$40.00	Not published
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview	$44.00	$22.00
Gemini 4 Argon (from Dec 1, 2026)	$80.00	$40.00
Gemini 4 Carbon (from Dec 1, 2026)	$80.00	Not published

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On this workload Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini 4 Carbon both go from $40 to $80 a month on December 1, well above Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview at $44. Because Carbon spends more thinking tokens per turn, the same tasks will usually produce more output tokens on Carbon than on Argon: if the 2 million output tokens became 3 million, an illustrative assumption, the Carbon bill would be $50 a month now and $100 from December 1. Real bills also vary with grounding charges, so the table works as a relative ranking.

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GEMINI API PRICING IN NOVEMBER 2026: CONFIRMED RATES AND OPEN POINTS.

Google's official pages confirm the December 1, 2026 increase for both Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini 4 Carbon to $4.00 input and $20.00 output, the January 1, 2027 doubling for Gemini 3.8 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash and the 3.8 TTS models, and the May 7, 2027 shutdown of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite. Carbon's prices come from its developer page and announcement because the main pricing page does not list the model yet, and its batch, flex and priority prices are not published.

The December 1 rerouting of gemini-2.5-pro and gemini-2.5-flash could not be reconfirmed on the official pages that loaded on November 11, and Google has not said whether the January 2027 Flash prices are permanent. Consumer subscriptions such as Google AI Pro and Ultra are billed separately and do not include API credit; their prices are in our guide to Gemini plans and pricing. For API budgets the two dates to plan around are December 1, 2026, when Argon and Carbon double, and January 1, 2027, when Gemini 3.8 Flash follows.

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