Google just priced gemini 3.8 flash at 0.75 dollars per million input tokens. that is 13x cheaper…
google just priced gemini 3.8 flash at 0.75 dollars per million input tokens.
that is 13x cheaper than gpt-6 astra input and still frontier-class on the bench — the moat just moved from capability to distribution.
Context
Google's blog of 2 September 2026 says Gemini 3.8 Flash is at the same introductory price as 3.7 Flash, 0.75 USD per million input tokens and 3.75 USD per million output tokens. It says the introductory price expires on 31 December 2026, and from 1 January 2027 it is 1.50 USD input and 7.50 USD output. The Gemini API pricing page shows the same standard input figures. Google Cloud docs give the release date as 2 September 2026.
The 0.75 dollar price is an introductory price with an expiry. The 13x figure is arithmetic against OpenAI's pricing page, which lists GPT-6 Astra standard short-context input at 10.00 USD per million: 10.00 divided by 0.75 is 13.3. That is Astra's current standard tier, not launch-week pricing, and the same page shows other tiers. Frontier-class on the bench has no inspected benchmark text. The moat moving to distribution is the author's opinion.
Related work
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (Google Cloud docs) ↗Release date 2 September 2026.
Watch next
- Gemini 3.8 Flash pricing after 1 January 2027.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 5 September 2026 at 19:03 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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