Model index · Text · text generation · reasoning · Google · released 2025-12-17

Gemini 3 Flash Preview pricing

Served by 5 providers from $0.5625 to $2.02 per 1M tokens on the standard tier — a 3.6× gap for identical weights.

A reasoning model — the headline price is not the whole bill

This model thinks before it answers, and those thinking tokens are billed at the output rate while never appearing in the response. A request can therefore cost several times what the per-1M figure suggests, and the multiplier depends on your prompts rather than on anything we can publish. Compare it against other reasoning models — the alternatives below are ordered to put those first.

Gemini 3 Flash Preview is a high speed, high value thinking model designed for agentic workflows, multi turn chat, and coding assistance. It delivers near Pro level reasoning and tool...

Google · first published 2025-12-17 · Text model · text generation · 1.05M context · description as published by the source, not written by us

$0.5625

Cheapest standard /1M — Google

1.05M

Native context window

8

Providers serving it

Quality not measured yet

Quality not measured yet

We measure models on request rather than pre-scoring the whole catalog, so this one has no score yet. Absence of a score is not a low score.

At 1M requests/month (1500 in / 500 out tokens), moving from Google to Google saves about $2,925/month.

Illustrative traffic shape, stated so you can check it against your own. Same weights both sides — but confirm quantisation and context below before switching.

Every provider and service tier

Standard on-demand rows first, cheapest of each group first. Tiers are not interchangeable — see the note below the table.

Provider In /1M Out /1M Blended /1M Tier Region Source
Google cheapest standard $0.2500 $1.50 $0.5625 standard third_party
Google (Gemini API) $0.5000 $3.00 $1.13 standard third_party
Google $0.5000 $3.00 $1.13 standard third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$0.5000 $3.00 $1.13 standard provider_api
Google $0.9000 $5.40 $2.02 standard third_party
Google (Gemini API) $0.2500 $1.50 $0.5625 flex third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$0.2500 $1.50 $0.5625 batch provider_api
Google (Gemini API) $0.9000 $5.40 $2.02 priority third_party

Not every row is the same product

This table mixes service tiers, and they are not interchangeable. Rows marked standard are ordinary on-demand requests. The others trade delivery for price:

  • flex — queued at lower priority, so latency is higher and requests can be deferred under load
  • batch — submitted as a batch and collected later, typically within 24 hours — not for interactive use
  • priority — reserved capacity for tighter, more predictable latency

Every comparison elsewhere on this site uses the standard tier, so a model is never shown at a queued rate beside another model's on-demand rate.

* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.

Compare Gemini 3 Flash Preview with alternatives

One model per vendor, ordered by how prominent the vendor is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is a real demand signal. This is not traffic or popularity data, which we do not have. Every alternative below does the same job — text generation — because a price comparison between a generator and, say, an upscaler is arithmetic rather than advice. Prices on both sides are standard on-demand rates, so the comparison is like for like — a discounted batch or flex rate is never shown against another model’s standard rate.

AlternativeVendor $/1M vs Gemini 3 Flash Preview QualityKindContextHosts
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek $0.5281
Baidu
6% cheaper 100/100 reasoning
open weights
1.05M 19
Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic $2.00
Anthropic
256% dearer 60/100 reasoning 200k 8
GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI $0.4625
OpenAI
18% cheaper 40/100 reasoning 400k 3
Mistral Small 4 Mistral $0.2625
Mistral
53% cheaper 40/100 reasoning 262k 2
Kimi K2.5 MoonshotAI $0.7875
DigitalOcean
40% dearer 75/100 reasoning
open weights
262k 14
Qwen3.7 Plus Alibaba $0.5600
Alibaba
0% cheaper not measured reasoning 1M 1
MiniMax M2.1 Minimax $0.5250
Minimax
7% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
205k 4
MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi $0.5438
Xiaomi
3% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
1.05M 7

Prices are the cheapest host for each model, blended at a 3:1 input:output ratio. "Quality" is our own probe suite where we have run it — see what it measures. A cheaper alternative is only a real saving if it also passes on the capability your workload needs.

6 of these alternatives cost less than Gemini 3 Flash Preview — the cheapest being Mistral Small 4 at $0.2625 per 1M tokens blended (53% cheaper).

Cheaper is not automatically better: check the quality column, and confirm the context window and capabilities your workload depends on before switching.

Before you switch

Identical weights do not guarantee identical output. Check that the cheaper host serves the model at full precision rather than a quantised copy, that its context window matches what you need, and that its rate limits carry your peak traffic. A cheaper host that cannot take your throughput is not cheaper — it is an outage.

Move to Google without a rewrite

VernaOne fronts every provider on this page with one API, so switching host is a config change — with automatic fallback if quality or latency regresses.

Try VernaOne free →

Frequently asked

How much does Gemini 3 Flash Preview cost?

The cheapest standard-tier provider is Google at $0.5625 per 1M tokens blended (3:1 input:output). The dearest is Google at $2.02 — a 3.6× difference for the same weights. Prices change often; verify with the provider before budgeting.

Which provider is best for Gemini 3 Flash Preview?

Cheapest is not automatically best. Compare quantisation (a lossy copy of the weights changes output), the context window each host actually serves, and rate limits. Where a provider serves less context than the model's native window we flag it in the table above.

Can I switch providers for Gemini 3 Flash Preview without changing code?

Yes, if you route through an abstraction. VernaOne exposes one API across every provider listed here, so switching host is a config change and you keep automatic fallback if the new one degrades.

← All models · Generated catalog of AI models and every provider that serves them, with normalised prices in USD per 1,000,000 tokens. Blended prices assume a 3:1 input:output ratio.