GEMINI 3.6 GA1M CONTEXTMULTIMODALCOMPUTER USEHALF PRICE UNTIL 2027
Gemini 3.6 Flash API Pricing
Gemini 3.6 Flash shipped GA on July 21, 2026 and is now Google's previous-generation Flash model, superseded by Gemini 3.7 Flash. Google has put it on a dated schedule: $0.75/M input, $3.75/M output and $0.075/M cached input through December 31, 2026, then standard pricing of $1.50 / $7.50 / $0.15 from January 1, 2027. The rates below are the ones in effect today — budget the January doubling before it lands. Checked by hand against ai.google.dev.
Input - per 1M tokens
$0.75/M
$1.50 from Jan 1, 2027 -50%
Output - per 1M tokens
$3.75/M
$7.50 from Jan 1, 2027 -50%
Cached input - per 1M tokens
$0.075/M
$0.15 from Jan 1, 2027 -90%
Effective - agentic blend
$0.481/M
92/8 split - 82% cache
§ 01 / TERMINAL
Run the numbers.
Live calculator pre-loaded with the Gemini 3.6 Flash rates in effect today — $0.75 input, $3.75 output, $0.075 cached. On January 1, 2027 every one of those doubles, so a workload sized here will cost twice as much then. Tweak spend, output mix, or cache assumptions and share the URL to share the calculation.
$ /mo
Workload split
Prompt cache hit rate
Tokens you can process
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Words equivalent (English)
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Effective rate
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§ 02 / SCENARIOS
Real-world presets.
CODING AGENT
Codebase-scale migration
$0.061/task
LONG DOC
Reading 100-page contracts
$0.065/doc
RAG SUPPORT
Ticket triage
$0.00532/ticket
ASSISTANT
Research planning turn
$0.011/turn
§ 03 / TOKENIZER
Paste text. See tokens. See cost.
Estimate · gemini-tokenizer-estimate · ≈3.85 chars/token Auto-counts as you type
This is a chars-per-token approximation, not a real tokenizer. Actual tokens vary by language, code density, and tool-call overhead — counts are typically ±10–20% off for English prose, more for code or non-Latin scripts. For exact billing, use the vendor's official tokenizer.
Characters 674
Words 109
Tokens (estimated) 175 tokens
Cost as input · uncached $0.00013 USD
Cost as output · uncached $0.00066 USD
Cost as cached input $0.00001 USD
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.6 Flash Current | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $3.75 | $0.481 agentic 92/8 | 1M | Mainstream agentic + multimodal work |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | $1.50 cache $0.15 | $9.00 | $1.08 pricier output | 1M | The model 3.6 replaces |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $2.00 cache $0.20 | $12.00 | $1.44 pricier | 1M | Google's frontier reasoning tier |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | $0.30 cache $0.03 | $2.50 | $0.272 cheaper | 1M | High-volume, simpler tasks |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $0.25 cache $0.025 | $1.50 | $0.18 cheapest Gemini | 1M | Cheapest per-token Gemini tier |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 cache $0.10 | $5.00 | $0.682 cheaper | 200K | Anthropic's fast tier |
| GPT-5.4 mini | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $4.50 | $0.541 cheaper | 400K | OpenAI's mid tier |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.44 cache $0.014 | $1.32 | $0.189 cheaper | 1M | Budget reasoning and coding |
Frequently asked.
Practical pricing questions, separated from calculator assumptions and regional taxes.
Q · 01 What is Gemini 3.6 Flash priced at? +
Google's paid-tier pricing page lists
$0.75/M input, $3.75/M output and $0.075/M cached input through December 31, 2026; standard pricing of $1.50 / $7.50 / $0.15 starts January 1, 2027. Explicit cache storage is billed on top at $0.50 per 1M tokens per hour, rising to $1.00 on the same date.Q · 02 Is it cheaper than Gemini 3.5 Flash? +
Yes, and by far more than at launch. It shipped 17% cheaper on output than 3.5 Flash at identical input; since August 14, 2026 the whole card is halved to
$0.75 / $3.75 against 3.5 Flash's unchanged $1.50 / $9.00. On our agentic blend that is $0.48/M effective against $1.08/M for 3.5 Flash — less than half. The halved rate is scheduled to expire on December 31, 2026. Google also says 3.6 consumes fewer output tokens per task, which would compound the saving, but that is a vendor claim we have not measured.Q · 03 Does output pricing include thinking tokens? +
Yes. Google's price table labels the output row "including thinking tokens", so reasoning is billed at the same
$3.75/M. There is no separate reasoning rate and no cheaper non-thinking variant.Q · 04 How is the effective price calculated? +
AI//COST uses the same 92/8 agentic blend everywhere: 92% of tokens are input, 82% of which are served from cache. For Gemini 3.6 Flash that gives a blended input of
$0.393/M and an effective cost of $0.96/M. Every model in the shelf above uses the identical formula, so the numbers compare directly.Q · 05 What does Batch or Flex inference cost? +
The model page marks Batch API, Flex and Priority inference as supported, but Google's pricing page publishes no per-model rate for those tiers on this model today. We record only what is published, so this page carries the standard tier alone — check the Batch API docs before assuming the usual discount applies.
Q · 06 Is Search grounding included in the token price? +
No. Grounding with Google Search and with Google Maps is billed separately: 5,000 prompts per month free, shared across the Gemini 3 family, then
$14 per 1,000 queries. One request can trigger several queries, and each is charged.Q · 07 What context window does it support? +
1,048,576 input tokens and 65,536 output tokens. Inputs cover text, image, video, audio and PDF; output is text only. Computer use is supported in preview, while Live API, audio generation and image generation are not.
Q · 08 How accurate is the tokenizer estimate? +
The browser widget uses a
gemini-tokenizer-estimate chars-per-token ratio for English text — Google publishes no downloadable tokenizer, so this is an estimate, not exact counting. Actual billing comes from the API's usage metadata and differs for code, non-Latin scripts and multimodal input.