Google doubles seven Gemini API prices: Gemini 4 Argon reaches Claude Opus 5.5's $4 / $20 on December 1, and Gemini 3.8 Flash goes to $1.50 / $7.50 on January 1

Google's own pricing pages date a doubling for seven Gemini models, starting with Gemini 4 Argon, which goes from $2 / $10 to $4 / $20 per million input and output tokens on December 1, the same list price as Claude Opus 5.5. Opus 5.5 is first on ArtificialWatch's bench index; Argon is seventh. The other six double on January 1, 2027, among them Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.6 Flash, which go from $0.75 / $3.75 to $1.50 / $7.50.

THE SEVEN

Each price doubles exactly, cached input included, on every tier Google lists for the model (Standard, Batch, Flex and Priority where it offers them). Standard rates, per million tokens:

• Gemini 4 Argon: $2 / $10 to $4 / $20, December 1, 2026
• Gemini 3.8 Flash: $0.75 / $3.75 to $1.50 / $7.50, January 1, 2027
• Gemini 3.6 Flash: $0.75 / $3.75 to $1.50 / $7.50, January 1
• Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS: $0.50 text in and $9 audio out, to $1 and $18, January 1
• Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS: $0.50 and $6, to $1 and $12, January 1
• Gemini Robotics ER 2 Preview: $1 / $5 to $2 / $10, January 1
• Gemini Robotics ER 2 Streaming Preview: $1 / $5 to $2 / $10, January 1

Context-cache storage for the two Flash models goes from $0.50 to $1 per million tokens per hour on the same day.

TODAY'S RATE IS THE INTRODUCTORY ONE

Google's Vertex AI pricing page calls the current Flash rate "introductory pricing" for Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash and 3.6 Flash, and $1.50 / $7.50 the standard price from January 1. On Vertex AI the lower rates are paid as a promotion, a 50% credit back on spend. The December 1 and January 1 dates are the same there, and Vertex AI dates the doubling for Gemini 3.7 Flash too, which the Gemini API page no longer lists. Argon's December 1 date has been on the page since launch on October 13.

OLDER MODEL IDS END UP ON THE NEW PRICES

Google's deprecations page says requests for gemini-3.7-flash already go to gemini-3.8-flash, and requests for gemini-3.5-flash to gemini-3.6-flash; neither endpoint is shutting down. From December 1, requests for gemini-2.5-pro go to Gemini 3.8 Flash and are billed at its rates, according to Google's November 2 changelog. So a team still calling 2.5 Pro pays $1.25 / $10 today for prompts up to 200,000 tokens, $0.75 / $3.75 in December, and $1.50 / $7.50 from January 1. Requests for gemini-2.5-flash move to Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite on December 1, at the same $0.30 / $2.50 text rate both list today.

WHERE THE NEW PRICES SIT

On ArtificialWatch's price table and bench index:

• At $4 / $20, Gemini 4 Argon (7th) costs the same as Claude Opus 5.5 (1st) and twice GPT-6.1 Sol (5th) and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (6th), which list at $2 / $10.
• At $1.50 / $7.50, Gemini 3.8 Flash (24th) costs more than GPT-6.1 Terra (8th) at $1 / $5, and 15 times Claude Haiku 5.5 (19th) and GPT-6 Luna (31st), which list at $0.10 / $0.50.
• Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, at $0.30 / $2.50, has no change dated. From January 1, Gemini 3.8 Flash's output costs three times Flash-Lite's, up from one and a half times.

WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW

Whether Google moves either date. Its pages give no reason beyond calling the current Flash rate introductory. And whether anything changes for the Gemini app or the Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions: these pricing pages cover the API only.

HOW THESE ARE COUNTED

Prices are Google's list prices, per million tokens, on its Gemini API pricing page (ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing) and its Vertex AI pricing page, read November 6, 2026. The routing is from Google's deprecations page and changelog. Ranks are from ArtificialWatch's bench index as of November 5: the median of a model's percentile ranks on up to seven public leaderboards. The dated changes for models on ArtificialWatch's price table are listed under Price changes ahead at artificialwatch.com/llm-pricing.