Gemini 3.5 Flash: more expensive, but Google plan to use it for everything
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-05-19
Simon Willison analyzes Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash release at Google I/O, documenting a sharp price increase—3x over its Flash predecessor—and its broad simultaneous deployment across Google's consumer and enterprise products.
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Extraction
Topics: geminillm-pricingmodel-releasegoogle-ioai-market-trends
Claims
- Gemini 3.5 Flash is 3x the price of Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 6x the price of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite.
- At $1.50/million input and $9/million output, Gemini 3.5 Flash nearly matches the price of Gemini 3.1 Pro ($2/$12).
- Google is deploying Gemini 3.5 Flash across its key consumer and enterprise products, including the Gemini app and AI Mode in Google Search.
- All three major AI labs—Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic—appear to be probing the price tolerance of their API customers.
- Running the Artificial Analysis benchmark against Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) cost $1,551.60, significantly more than the $892.28 cost for Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview.
Key quotes
It feels like all three of the major AI labs are starting to probe the price tolerance of their API customers.
Running the benchmark for 3.5 Flash (high) cost significantly more than 3.1 Pro Preview!
That pelican looks like it's in Miami for a crypto conference.