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Google Gemini API pricing and limits

iScore51–69 · ≈#1/10
ai.google.dev · LLM APIs
SEPT 2026 audit

Hosted inference for the Gemini model family, with a free tier and per-million-token paid pricing.

Visit Google Gemini API documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

Entry paid plan$5 minimum prepaid credit to move from the Free Tier to the Paid Tier; the minimum credit purchase is $5 and the maximum $5,000. No monthly plan fee — usage is billed per token. Applies to the Prepay billing plan; some accounts are offered or assigned Postpay instead.
RegionsGoogle publishes availability as a country list rather than deployment regions: the Gemini API and Google AI Studio are listed as available in 230 countries and territories, counted from the page's own list, which publishes no total. Country and territory availability for access, not a choice of data region.
Free tierYes
CategoryLLM APIs

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 18 criteria comparedSources last checked

Google Gemini API pricing at a glance

Entry paid plan
$5 minimum prepaid credit to move from the Free Tier to the Paid Tier; the minimum credit purchase is $5 and the maximum $5,000 source ↗
Pricing model
Per million tokens, with dated price changes published in advance — the current Gemini 3.x rates are explicitly promotional through 31… source ↗

First line of each sourced value. The full text is in Google Gemini API pricing below.

Google Gemini API prices by model

API prices per modelStandard paid-tier prices in USD per 1M tokens as published on the Gemini Developer API pricing page; most models also have a free tier. Notes gives the context-caching (cached input) price, the rate for prompts over 200k tokens, and promotional end dates. The paid tier's Batch API is a 50% cost reduction.
ModelInput (per 1M tokens)Output (per 1M tokens)Notes
Gemini 3.8 Flash$0.75$3.75Promotional price through December 31, 2026; $1.50 in / $7.50 out from January 1, 2027. Cached input $0.075.
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview$2.00$12.00Preview; no free tier. Prompts over 200k tokens: $4.00 in / $18.00 out. Cached input $0.20.
Gemini 3.7 Flash$0.75$3.75Promotional price through December 31, 2026; $1.50 in / $7.50 out from January 1, 2027. Cached input $0.075.
Gemini 3.6 Flash$0.75$3.75Promotional price through December 31, 2026; $1.50 in / $7.50 out from January 1, 2027. Cached input $0.075.
Gemini 3.5 Flash$1.50$9.00Cached input $0.15.
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite$0.30$2.50Same input price for text, image, video and audio. Cached input $0.03.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite$0.25$1.50Input shown is text/image/video; audio input $0.50. Cached input $0.025.
Gemini 2.5 Pro$1.25$10.00Prompts over 200k tokens: $2.50 in / $15.00 out. Cached input $0.125.
Gemini 2.5 Flash$0.30$2.50Input shown is text/image/video; audio input $1.00. Cached input $0.03.
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite$0.10$0.40Input shown is text/image/video; audio input $0.30. Cached input $0.01.

Gemini Developer API pricing | Gemini API | Google AI for Developers · read · every row quoted from this page

01.Evaluation guide

Who it suits

Getting to a working prototype without a card, then staying on the cheapest frontier-adjacent rates in this set — $0.75 per million input tokens is well under half what Anthropic and OpenAI charge for their top models.

Consider something else if…

The rates are dated: they roughly double on 1 January 2027, free-tier content is used to improve Google's products, and rate limits are not published anywhere you can read before signing up.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Machine-derived signals

Not sourced facts — counts and matches read by a script, not a person. See each line for where it comes from.

Google Gemini API's own site (ai.google.dev) self-detects as: hosting — Indian hosting, Cloud PaaS, Cloud Hosting, Server Location (category-level via BuiltWith, not a named vendor)

Each value below links to the page it was read from, with the sentence it came from. Criteria Google Gemini API does not publish are not listed.

Google Gemini API pricing

4 criteria
Free tierYes
Sources (1) →
  • Gemini Developer API Pricing ↗

    “Free input & output tokens [...] Limited access to certain models [...] Google AI Studio access [...] Content used to improve our products [...] Get started for Free”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Kind of free offerFree tier
Sources (1) →
  • Gemini Developer API Pricing ↗

    “Free input & output tokens [...] Limited access to certain models [...] Google AI Studio access [...] Content used to improve our products [...] Get started for Free”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Entry paid plan$5 minimum prepaid credit to move from the Free Tier to the Paid Tier; the minimum credit purchase is $5 and the maximum $5,000. No monthly plan fee — usage is billed per token. Applies to the Prepay billing plan; some accounts are offered or assigned Postpay instead.
Sources (1) →
  • Billing | Gemini API | Google AI for Developers ↗

    “Upgrading from the Free Tier to the Paid Tier means linking a billing account and prepaying to add a minimum of $5 (or equivalent in other currencies) of credits to your account. [...] The minimum purchase is $5. The maximum amount of credits you can prepay for is $5,000.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Pricing modelPer million tokens, with dated price changes published in advance — the current Gemini 3.x rates are explicitly promotional through 31 December 2026 and roughly double on 1 January 2027. A free tier exists, and its content is used to improve Google's products where the paid tier's is not.
Sources (1) →

Infrastructure

1 criteria
RegionsGoogle publishes availability as a country list rather than deployment regions: the Gemini API and Google AI Studio are listed as available in 230 countries and territories, counted from the page's own list, which publishes no total. Country and territory availability for access, not a choice of data region.
Sources (1) →

Inference

8 criteria
Input price, top model$0.75 per million input tokens for Gemini 3.8 Flash through 31 December 2026, then $1.50. Gemini 3.1 Pro, still preview, is $2.00 for prompts up to 200k tokens and $4.00 above.
Sources (1) →
  • Gemini Developer API Pricing ↗

    “Gemini 3.8 Flash [...] Input price | Free of charge | $0.75 through December 31, 2026. $1.50 starting January 1, 2027. [...] Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview [...] Input price | Not available | $2.00, prompts <= 200k tokens $4.00, prompts > 200k tokens”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Output price, top model$3.75 per million output tokens for Gemini 3.8 Flash through 31 December 2026, then $7.50. Thinking tokens are billed as output.
Sources (1) →
Input price, cheapest model$0.30 per million input tokens for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, with output at $2.50.
Sources (1) →
  • Gemini Developer API Pricing ↗

    “Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite [...] Input price | Free of charge | $0.30 (text / image / video / audio) Output price (including thinking tokens) | Free of charge | $2.50”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Context window1,048,576 tokens for Gemini 3.8 Flash. Read from the Vertex AI model card: the Gemini API docs build their model cards client-side and publish no figure a fetch can read.
Sources (1) →
Max output tokens65,536 tokens for Gemini 3.8 Flash, and Google counts thinking tokens as output.
Sources (1) →
Prompt cachingSupported
Sources (1) →
  • Gemini Developer API pricing ↗

    “Context caching price Free of charge $0.075 through December 31, 2026. $0.15 starting January 1, 2027. $0.50 / 1,000,000 tokens per hour (storage price) through December 31, 2026.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Batch discount50% off through the Batch API, which is a paid-tier feature.
Sources (1) →
Rate limitsTied to a usage tier — Free, then Tier 1/2/3 unlocked by cumulative spend — and enforced as requests per minute, input tokens per minute and requests per day. Google publishes no numbers in the docs: limits are viewed in AI Studio and are stated not to be guaranteed.
Sources (1) →
  • Rate limits — Gemini API ↗

    “Rate limits depend on a variety of factors (such as your usage tier) and can be viewed in Google AI Studio. [...] Specified rate limits are not guaranteed and actual capacity may vary. [...] Usage tier | Qualification | Billing tier cap Free | Active project or free trial | N/A Tier 1 | Set up and link an active billing account | $250”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs · Report a correction

Compliance

5 criteria
ISO 27001Google commits to maintain ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification for the Processor Services, which include Gemini API Paid Services. Contractual commitment in the DPA the Gemini API terms incorporate, not a Gemini-specific ISO certificate.
Sources (1) →
  • Data Processing Addendum for Products Where Google is a Data Processor ↗

    “means ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification or a comparable certification for the Processor Services. [...] 7.4 Security Certification. To evaluate and help ensure the continued effectiveness of the Security Measures, Google will maintain the ISO 27001 Certification or other appropriate measures to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Security Measures.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

GDPR / data residencyProcessed under Google's Data Processing Addendum on the paid tier; abuse-detection logs may be stored or cached in any country where Google has facilities. Scope: the logs Google keeps for Paid Services to detect Prohibited Use Policy violations.
Sources (1) →
Encryption at restGoogle security policies mandate encryption at rest for all user data; personal data is encrypted at the storage level, generally using AES256. From the processor DPA that the Gemini API Additional Terms incorporate for Paid Services.
Sources (1) →
Role-based access controlThe only IAM role published for the Gemini API is a service agent role for GCS reads; the reference states there are no IAM permissions for the service.
Sources (1) →
Dedicated infrastructureProvisioned throughput is offered as optional access on the Enterprise tier, which the pricing page says is powered by Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.
Sources (1) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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Google Gemini API pricing questions

How much does Google Gemini API cost?

$5 minimum prepaid credit to move from the Free Tier to the Paid Tier; the minimum credit purchase is $5 and the maximum $5,000. No monthly plan fee — usage is billed per token. Applies to the Prepay billing plan; some accounts are offered or assigned Postpay instead.

Billing | Gemini API | Google AI for Developers · read

How does Google Gemini API charge?

Per million tokens, with dated price changes published in advance — the current Gemini 3.x rates are explicitly promotional through 31 December 2026 and roughly double on 1 January 2027. A free tier exists, and its content is used to improve Google's products where the paid tier's is not.

Gemini Developer API Pricing · read

Does Google Gemini API have a free tier?

Yes.

Gemini Developer API Pricing · read

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.