Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash API Pricing
Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.825 per 1M input tokens and $4.13 per 1M output tokens (cache reads: $0.083). Context window: 1.0M. Prices verified 2026-10-21 · source
Alternatives to consider
95% cheaper with nearly identical quality (41.8 vs 40.9)
+16.1 quality points for 21% more
Cheapest google model — 97% less per month
Rebuilt daily from our snapshot archive — the chart appears once a model has 5+ snapshots of history.
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Intelligence measures reasoning/knowledge/coding benchmarks. A high score with a low blended price = value pick; check the value chart to see where this model lands.
Token economics
| Token type | Price | vs base input |
|---|---|---|
| Standard input | $0.825 | — |
| Cache read | $0.083 | −90% |
| Cache write (5m) | $0.042 | -95% |
| Output | $4.13 | — |
| Web search tool | $14/1k searches | — |
Prompt caching stores repeated context server-side: reads cost far less, but writes carry a one-time premium.
Higher effort = deeper thinking = more reasoning tokens billed as output.
What would Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash cost you per month?
| Workload | Requests/mo | Avg tokens (in/out) | Est. monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light chatbot | 10,000 | 800 / 400 | $23.10 |
| Coding agent | 5,000 | 8,000 / 2,000 | $74.25 |
| RAG pipeline | 30,000 | 4,000 / 500 | $160.88 |
| Doc summarizer | 2,000 | 20,000 / 1,000 | $41.25 |
Estimates use list prices without prompt caching. Caching can cut input cost by up to 90% on repeated context.
About Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash
Gemini 3.8 Flash is Google's most intelligent Flash model with significant gains from 3.7 Flash across software engineering, agentic tasks, and multi-step reasoning.
Compare Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash with
- 3.8 Flash vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra Pro
- 3.8 Flash vs Anthropic: Claude Fable 5
- 3.8 Flash vs Anthropic: Claude Opus 5
- 3.8 Flash vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol
Popular head-to-heads — see all on the comparisons index.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash cost?
Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.825 per 1M input tokens and $4.13 per 1M output tokens; cached input tokens cost $0.083 per 1M. Verified 2026-10-21 — provider source.
What is the context window?
1.0M tokens, with up to 66K output tokens per response. That's roughly 1311 pages of text in a single request.
Does it support prompt caching?
Yes — cached input is $0.083/1M, about 90% cheaper than standard input. Agents and RAG workloads with repeated context benefit most.
What's a cheaper alternative?
ScaleDown: Summarize saves about 98% on a typical workload with comparable quality.
Official resources
- Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash on OpenRouter — live endpoint, pricing source of record.
- Artificial Analysis leaderboard → — independent intelligence and performance rankings.
- Gemini docs → — first-party model specifications and limits.
- LMArena leaderboard → — independent human-preference rankings.
- Shred your current bill — paste a CSV and see if switching saves money.