Checked Oct 17, 2026
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Best for: Fast, affordable agents, coding and business workflows at scale.
- LMArena text #9 of 416
- Reasoning
- Reads text, images, video, audio, PDFs
- Input
- $0.75
- per 1M tokens
- Output
- $3.75
- per 1M tokens
- Cached input
- $0.075
- per 1M tokens
- Context window
- 1M
- tokens in one request
- Max output
- 64K
- tokens per reply
- Released
- Sep 2, 2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- Mar 2026
- Weights
- Closed
- API and apps only
Gemini 3.8 Flash. Price shown is valid through Dec 31, 2026; from Jan 1, 2027 it doubles to $1.50 input / $7.50 output / $0.15 cached. Output includes thinking tokens. Cache storage billed separately ($0.50 per 1M tokens per hour).
What would Gemini 3.8 Flash cost you?
Change the numbers; the chart compares all 10 featured models at the same usage.
What it's good at
From Google's own announcements and docs, linked.
- Google calls it its most intelligent Flash model, built for long software-engineering tasks, autonomous agents and complex business workflows. source
- Google's model card reports 73.7% on DeepSWE v1.1 and 89.4% on Terminal-Bench 2.1. source
- A 1M-token input window, multimodal input, adjustable thinking levels, function calling and code execution, and the API has a free tier. source
Watch out for
Limits and costs worth knowing before you build on it.
- The $0.75 / $3.75 introductory price runs until Dec 31, 2026, then doubles to $1.50 / $7.50.
- Google warns it can use more tokens (more reasoning steps and tool calls) at higher effort, which raises the real cost per task.
- Thinking tokens are billed as output, and cache storage is billed by the hour.
- In the Gemini app it needs a Google AI Pro or Ultra plan.
Scores
Benchmark numbers are as published by Google; we haven't rerun them. Makers use different setups, so don't compare one maker's numbers with another's. The leaderboard rank comes from public blind votes.
| Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena text rank | #9 (1496) | Oct 15, 2026 |
| DeepSWE v1.1 (long software-engineering tasks) | 73.7% | |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (agentic coding) | 89.4% | |
| HLE-Verified (expert reasoning) | 54.9% |
How to start
Try it in the app
The quickest way to see if it suits your work. Open Google's app.
Get an API key
Sign up on Google's developer platform and add billing; you pay per token as shown above. Read the docs.
Call the model
Use this model ID in your Google API requests:
gemini-3.8-flash
Host the app you build with it
Gemini 3.8 Flash runs on Google's servers, but your bot, agent or n8n workflow needs a home. A small VPS is usually enough, since the heavy work happens at Google.
| Provider | From | Starting plan | Free tier | Our rating | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HostingerChecked | $2.99/mo | Premium (web hosting)20 GB SSD | No (30-day money-back guarantee) | Not rated | VisitOfficial site |
| DigitalOceanChecked | $4/mo | Basic Droplet 512 MiB1 vCPU · 0.5 GB RAM · 10 GiB SSD | Occasional promo credit for new users | Not rated | VisitOfficial site |
| VultrChecked | $2.50/mo | Cloud Compute Regular Performance, IPv6-only 0.5 GB1 vCPU · 0.5 GB RAM · 10 GB SSD | No free tier | Not rated | VisitOfficial site |
| Hetzner CloudChecked | $6.49/mo | CX23 (Cost-Optimized, Intel/AMD)2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 40 GB NVMe | No | Not rated | VisitOfficial site |
Compare with the other 9
| Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Context | Arena |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-oss-120bOpenAI | $0.15 | $0.60 | 128K | #215 |
| Gemini 3.8 FlashGoogle | $0.75 | $3.75 | 1M | #9 |
| DeepSeek V4 ProDeepSeek | $1.32 | $3.96 | 1M | #56 |
| Grok 4.7xAI | $2 | $6 | 500K | #89 |
| Gemini 4 ArgonGoogle | $2 | $10 | 1M | #1 |
| GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI | $2 | $10 | 1.05M | #22 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic | $2 | $10 | 1M | #36 |
| Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic | $4 | $20 | 1M | #3 |
| Claude Fable 5.1Anthropic | $10 | $50 | 1M | #6 |
| GPT-6 AstraOpenAI | $10 | $50 | 1.05M | #30 |
Cheapest first, using 3 input tokens per output token.
Questions
How much does Gemini 3.8 Flash cost?
Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens at standard API rates, and $0.075 per million cached input tokens (US dollars, checked Oct 17, 2026). It is the 2nd cheapest of the 10 models we feature.
How big is Gemini 3.8 Flash's context window?
1,048,576 tokens for the prompt, documents and conversation in one request. A single reply can be up to 65,536 tokens. How many words that holds depends on the model's tokenizer.
Is Gemini 3.8 Flash open source?
No. Google hasn't published its weights, so you use it through the Google API or apps rather than on your own hardware.
When was Gemini 3.8 Flash released?
Google released it in Sep 2, 2026.
What is Gemini 3.8 Flash's knowledge cutoff?
Google gives its training-data cutoff as Mar 2026. For later events it needs web search or documents you provide.
Sources
- Google pricing, checked Oct 17, 2026
- ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models/gemini-3.8-flash
- deepmind.google/models/model-cards/gemini-3-8-flash
- blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/3-8-flash-and-3-8-flash-cyber
Facts checked Oct 17, 2026. Model names belong to their makers; AskGPU isn't affiliated with Google. Spotted something out of date? Tell us at hello@askgpu.com.