Google's new Gemini 3.5 Flash is a step up from its predecessor, but it costs more than five times as much to run. High token consumption on agent tasks pushes total costs past the pricier Pro model in benchmark testing.
Google Deepmind has released Gemini 3.5 Flash, the latest version of its Flash model family. Flash was long positioned as the cheaper, faster alternative to Google's more powerful Pro models. An analysis by Artificial Analysis, which got early access, found that Gemini 3.5 Flash costs 5.5 times more to run in benchmark testing than Gemini 3 Flash and nearly twice as much as the Pro model Gemini 3.1. The context window stays at one million tokens.
Gemini 3.5 Flash has gotten much more expensive than its predecessor, both in token price and token consumption. | Image: Artificial Analysis
Token prices alone have tripled: Google now charges $1.50 per million input tokens and $9.00 per million output tokens, up from $0.50 and $3.00 for Gemini 3 Flash. Per token, that's still cheaper than Gemini 3.1 Pro at $2.00 and $12.00.
In practice, though, the math flips. Gemini 3.5 Flash burns through so many more tokens on agent-based tasks that total costs end up 75 percent higher than Gemini 3.1 Pro, according to Artificial Analysis.
