Google priced gemini 3.8 flash at 0.75 dollars per million input tokens and shoved it into github…
google priced gemini 3.8 flash at 0.75 dollars per million input tokens and shoved it into github copilot on the same day. that is 13x cheaper than gpt-6 astra at near-frontier quality. the frontier race is over — it is now a procurement spreadsheet race, and your finance team is the gatekeeper nobody on dev twitter has noticed yet.
Context
Google's Gemini API docs list Gemini 3.8 Flash as generally available at an introductory price of 0.75 dollars per million input tokens and 3.75 per million output tokens through the end of the year, with a 1M context and 64k max output. Google's blog of 2 September 2026 gives that price through 31 December 2026, then 1.50 and 7.50. GitHub's changelog of 3 September 2026 says it is available in Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise, billed at introductory provider pricing through 31 December 2026. OpenAI's Astra page lists API prices of 10 dollars input and 50 output per million tokens at the standard tier.
The Gemini price dates (2 September 2026) and the Copilot availability date (3 September 2026) are distinct, so same day is not supported by these dates, with time zones not checked. The 13x is derived arithmetic: 10 divided by 0.75 is 13.3 on input and 50 divided by 3.75 is 13.3 on output, at the introductory price only. After 31 December 2026 the Gemini price doubles and the ratio is about 6.7x. Near-frontier quality, the frontier race being over and the procurement spreadsheet race are the author's opinion; no benchmarks were compared.
Related work
- Gemini 3.8 Flash in GitHub Copilot (GitHub Changelog, 3 Sep 2026) ↗Dated one day after Google's blog.
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 6 September 2026 at 06:02 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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