# Gemini API Pricing in 2026: Text, Video and Speech Compared

> Gemini is billed three ways — per token, per clip and per generation. Every current price side by side with the official one, plus where the money really goes.

- **Published**: 2026-07-27
- **Tag**: Pricing
- **Read time**: 7 min

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Google prices Gemini three different ways depending on what you're generating: **per million tokens** for text, **per clip** for video, and **per call** for speech. Mixing those up is the fastest way to get a cost model wrong.

This post lists all three, with the direct price beside ours, then shows where the money actually goes.

All prices USD, checked 15 August 2026 (1 credit = $0.01). Percentages are against standard rates; the $1,250 top-up pack (+10% bonus) adds a few more points.

# Gemini text pricing, per million tokens

| Model | Input (direct) | Input (ours) | Output (direct) | Output (ours) | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.30 | **$0.1574** | $2.50 | **$1.3117** | −48% |
| Gemini 3 Flash | $0.50 | **$0.2624** | $3.00 | **$1.5741** | −48% |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 | **$0.6596** | $10.00 | **$5.247** | −47% |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | $1.50 | **$0.7871** | $7.50 | **$3.9353** | −48% |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2.00 | **$0.9745** | $12.00 | **$6.2215** | −51% / −48% |
| Gemini 3 Pro | $2.00 | **$0.9745** | $12.00 | **$6.2215** | −51% / −48% |

Model pages: [Gemini 3.1 Pro](/models/gemini-3-1-pro) · [Gemini 3.6 Flash](/models/gemini-3-6-flash) · [Gemini 3 Flash](/models/gemini-3-flash) · [Gemini 2.5 Pro](/models/gemini-2-5-pro) · [Gemini 2.5 Flash](/models/gemini-2-5-flash).

The interesting line here isn't the discount, it's the **spread inside the family**. Gemini 2.5 Flash output is $1.3117 per million; Gemini 3.1 Pro output is $6.2215 — 4.7× more. Most products send everything to the Pro tier by default and pay nearly five times too much for work a Flash model handles fine.

Worth knowing if you're picking on price alone: **GPT-5.6 Terra is now $0.65 in / $3.90 out**, which undercuts Gemini 3.1 Pro on both sides. If your workload isn't tied to Gemini specifically, benchmark [Terra](/models/gpt-5-6-terra) before you commit.

# Gemini video pricing, per clip

Gemini Omni is billed per finished clip, not per second — so cost scales with duration in fixed steps.

| Clip | 720p | 1080p |
|---|---|---|
| 4s | **$0.31** | **$0.33** |
| 6s | **$0.41** | **$0.41** |
| 4K, 4s | **$0.73** (direct $1.8667, −61%) | — |
| 4K, 10s | **$1.04** (direct $1.875, −45%) | — |

Two things fall out of per-clip billing:

- **1080p costs almost nothing extra at short durations** — 2 cents more at 4 seconds, and identical at 6 seconds. Render high.
- **Duration is your real cost dial.** If your product shows short loops, generate short.

Google's own [Veo 3.1](/models/veo-3-1) is on the same key at $1.7286 per 720p clip (−46%), and [Veo 3.1 Fast](/models/veo-3-1-fast) at $0.5847 (−51%) — three times cheaper than standard Veo for a lot of use cases. For per-second models, [Seedance 2.0 Mini](/models/bytedance-seedance-2-mini) starts at $0.019/s and [Grok Imagine 1.5](/models/grok-imagine-video-1-5-preview) at $0.0268/s — the two cheapest video options on the platform, both around 74–78% below direct. Browse them all under [video models](/market?m=video).

# Gemini speech pricing

| Model | Direct | Our price | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS | $0.03 | **$0.0257** | −14% |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview TTS | $0.03 | **$0.0257** | −14% |

Model page: [Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS](/models/gemini-3-1-flash-tts).

# What a real workload costs

A document-summarisation feature: 8,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens per document, 100,000 documents a month — 800M input, 50M output.

| Model | Direct | Ours | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $240 + $125 = **$365** | $125.92 + $65.59 = **$191.51** | **$173.49/mo** |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $1,600 + $600 = **$2,200** | $779.60 + $311.08 = **$1,090.68** | **$1,109.32/mo** |

Note the bigger lesson in that table: choosing Flash over Pro saves $899 a month at our prices — five times more than the discount does on Flash. **Model selection beats vendor selection.** The discount is on top.

# How to call Gemini

```http
POST https://you.bot/api/v1/generate
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

{
  "modelId": "gemini-3-1-pro",
  "input": { "prompt": "Summarise this support thread in three bullets." }
}
```

Text models return the answer inline in the create response — nothing to poll. Video is asynchronous, so you poll or pass a `callbackUrl`:

```http
POST https://you.bot/api/v1/generate
{ "modelId": "gemini-omni-video", "input": { "prompt": "...", "duration": 4 } }

GET https://you.bot/api/v1/task/{taskId}?model=gemini-omni-video
```

Swapping between Gemini, Claude and GPT is a one-string change, which makes it cheap to route easy requests to a Flash-class model and hard ones to a Pro-class model. More on that in [One key, every model](/blog/one-key-every-model).

# Three ways to cut a Gemini bill

**Route by difficulty.** Classification, extraction and routing go to Gemini 2.5 Flash or 3 Flash. Reserve 3.1 Pro for genuinely hard reasoning. This is the single biggest lever.

**Cap output.** Output is 5–8× input across the family. Asking for JSON instead of prose, and capping `max_tokens` at what you'll render, cuts more than any vendor switch.

**Don't pay for failures.** Failed, errored and empty generations are refunded automatically here, which matters most on video where one clip costs more than a thousand text calls. ([How that works.](/blog/never-pay-for-failed-jobs))

Comparing across vendors as well? [The cheapest AI APIs in 2026](/blog/cheapest-ai-api) puts Gemini beside GPT, Claude and the image and video models, and [Claude API pricing](/blog/claude-api-pricing) does the same for Anthropic's line-up.

# FAQ

**How much does the Gemini API cost?**
Direct, Gemini 2.5 Flash is $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 output; Gemini 3.1 Pro is $2.00/$12.00. Here the same models are $0.1574/$1.3117 and $0.9745/$6.2215 — 47–51% less at standard rates, checked 15 August 2026.

**Which Gemini model is cheapest?**
Gemini 2.5 Flash, at $0.1574 per million input tokens and $1.3117 output. It's roughly 4.7× cheaper on output than Gemini 3.1 Pro.

**How is Gemini video billed?**
Gemini Omni bills per clip, not per second: $0.31 for a 4-second 720p clip, $0.41 at 6 seconds, $0.73 for 4 seconds at 4K. 1080p costs almost nothing extra at short durations.

**Is Gemini cheaper than Claude or GPT?**
At the Flash tiers, yes — Gemini 2.5 Flash output is $1.3117 per million versus $7.702 for Claude Sonnet 5. At the Pro tier, GPT-5.6 Terra is now cheaper than Gemini 3.1 Pro on both input and output. Pick on capability for your task, then optimise price.

**Do I pay for failed generations?**
No — failed, errored and empty generations are refunded automatically.