Gemini 3.6 Flash
Google · released Jul 21, 2026
- Type
- Proprietary
- Input
- $1.50
- Output
- $7.50
- Cached
- Not published
List price · per 1M tokens · Google AI at 1M context · source ↗ · a reseller below undercuts it; the table carries the spread
Our take
Written Aug 2, 2026Google's fast top-tier chat model currently tops the independent chat leaderboard we track. It accepts audio and video natively, which is unusual among top-tier models.
Pick this for high-volume production chat or multimodal work where top-tier quality is worth a mid-tier price. Skip it if you need AWS or Azure hosting, or if avoiding vendor lock-in is a priority.
The case for it
- First on Arena Text (overall), the independent human-preference board, as of July 2026.
- Roughly one-sixth the price of Claude Opus 5 for the tier.
- Accepts text, image, file, audio and video, the widest input set among top-tier models.
The case against it
- Google-only hosting: available on Google AI Studio, Vertex and OpenRouter, which routes back to Google.
- Not downloadable, so API access only; no self-hosting path.
How good is it?
IntelligencePuzzles, maths, exam questions
Arena Text (overall)9th of 143 · 1482.7
CodingWriting and fixing code on its own
Arena Coding12th of 143 · 1521.5
AgenticPlanning, calling tools, staying on task
Arena Agent (IPS)25th of 36 · −0.016
WritingWe do not rate this
Two boards come close and neither tests writing: Arena Creative Writing asks people which of two replies they prefer, and LiveBench Language tests whether a model understood a passage. So we show where Gemini 3.6 Flash placed and give it no mark out of five.
These tests check whether a model follows instructions — a precondition for all the work above, but not a measure of how well that work is done, which is why they get no rating.
Every published score for this model16 scoresEvery figure we hold, from 16 boards, with who ran it and a link to the source — including the boards no rating above is built on.
Or rent it from someone else
Why this differs from the header. The strip above quotes Google AI's own list price. This is the cheapest live offer at the widest standard context we hold, whoever is serving it — a reseller undercutting a lab is ordinary commerce, not an error.
- per 1M tokens
- $1.50 in / $7.50 out
- Context served
- 1M
- Throughput
- Not measured
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Vertex AIglobal | $0.75 / $3.75 | 1M | 48 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| Google AI Studioflex tier | $0.75 / $3.75 | 1M | 131 tok/s | No | Yes55 days | Unknown |
| OpenRouter | $1.50 / $7.50 | 1M | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Google AI | $1.50 / $7.50 | 1M66K out | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Google AI Studio | $1.50 / $7.50 | 1M | 135 tok/s | No | Yes55 days | Unknown |
| Google AI Studiopriority tier | $2.70 / $13.50 | 1M | not measured | No | Yes55 days | Unknown |
Google Vertex AI
Google AI StudioAcross the 6 listings we hold: 4 say they do not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 2 do not say. 1 appear in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us rather than confirmed either way.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
- ✓
- Supported
- ✗
- Not supported
- Not published
- host gave no parameter list
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Vertex AIglobal | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google AI Studioflex | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| OpenRouter | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google AI | |||
| Google AI Studio | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google AI Studiopriority | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Tool calling: 5 of 6 listings say yes, 1 publishes no parameter list. JSON output: 5 of 6 listings say yes, 1 publishes no parameter list. Strict schema: 5 of 6 listings say yes, 1 publishes no parameter list.
Models people weigh against Gemini 3.6 Flash
When we formed this view
Dates behind this page
Prices last checked 9d ago
What we do not know about this model yet
- 1 of 6 listings publish no parameter list, so what their API accepts is unknown to us.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 2 of 6 listings do not say whether they train on prompts.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsWe hold no licence record for this model. Inside are the identifiers you need to pull it — its Hugging Face repo where we have one, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
Commercial API terms. We hold no licence record for this model, so there is nothing to summarise here.
Identifiers
- Modality record
- text+image+file+audio+video->text
- Catalogue slug
- google-gemini-3-6-flash