GEMINI 3.6 GA1M CONTEXTMULTIMODALCOMPUTER USE17% CHEAPER OUTPUT
Gemini 3.6 Flash API Pricing
Gemini 3.6 Flash is Google's new mainstream model, shipped GA on July 21, 2026. It holds Gemini 3.5 Flash's $1.50/M input but drops output to $7.50/M from $9.00 — a rare case of a vendor cutting the rate on a newer model. Cached input stays $0.15/M. Pulled directly from ai.google.dev daily.
Input - per 1M tokens
$1.50/M
Same as 3.5 Flash flat
Output - per 1M tokens
$7.50/M
Was $9.00 on 3.5 -17%
Cached input - per 1M tokens
$0.15/M
Storage $1/M-hour -90%
Effective - agentic blend
$0.96/M
92/8 split - 82% cache
§ 01 / TERMINAL
Run the numbers.
Live calculator pre-loaded with current Gemini 3.6 Flash rates. 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
$0.122/task
LONG DOC
Reading 100-page contracts
$0.131/doc
RAG SUPPORT
Ticket triage
$0.011/ticket
ASSISTANT
Research planning turn
$0.022/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 626
Words 100
Tokens (estimated) 163 tokens
Cost as input · uncached $0.00024 USD
Cost as output · uncached $0.00122 USD
Cost as cached input $0.00002 USD
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.6 Flash Current | $1.50 cache $0.15 | $7.50 | $0.96 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 | $0.27 cheaper | 1M | High-volume, simpler tasks |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $0.25 cache $0.03 | $1.50 | $0.18 cheapest Gemini | 1M | Cheapest per-token Gemini tier |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 cache $0.10 | $5.00 | $0.68 cheaper | 200K | Anthropic's fast tier |
| GPT-5.4 mini | $0.75 cache $0.07 | $4.50 | $0.54 cheaper | 400K | OpenAI's mid tier |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.14 cache $0.0028 | $0.28 | $0.05 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
$1.50/M input, $7.50/M output and $0.15/M cached input. Explicit cache storage is billed on top at $1.00 per 1M tokens per hour.Q · 02 Is it cheaper than Gemini 3.5 Flash? +
Yes, on output. Input is identical at
$1.50/M, but output drops from $9.00/M to $7.50/M — 17% less. On our agentic blend that is $0.96/M effective against $1.08/M for 3.5 Flash. 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
$7.50/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.