Model comparison
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Gemini 3.8 Flash: pricing, context and features compared
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 and $3.75. Here is how they compare on specs, on what real workloads cost, and on which to pick for what, from prices updated daily.
Flash Lite is Google’s lowest-cost tier and Flash the step above it. The choice is whether a task needs Flash or whether the cheaper model is enough at your volume.
- Input / 1M
- $0.30
- Output / 1M
- $2.50
- Context
- 1,048,576
- Max output
- 65,536
- Input / 1M
- $0.75
- Output / 1M
- $3.75
- Context
- 1,048,576
- Max output
- 65,536
Verdict
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Gemini 3.8 Flash: which to pick
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has the lower list prices: 2.5× cheaper per input token and 1.5× per output token. On our data, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has the edge for the lowest bill, very long prompts, repeated prompts and batch jobs, and Gemini 3.8 Flash has no measurable edge; its case rests on answer quality, so choose it only if it does clearly better in your own tests. For scale, a support chatbot handling 1,000 requests a day costs about $37.94 a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and $64.45 on Gemini 3.8 Flash.
- Lowest bill for typical workloadsPick Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs less on all 4 workloads below, 1.7× to 2.1× cheaper than Gemini 3.8 Flash at list prices.
- Very long prompts (whole codebases, long documents)Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
- Both read about 1,048,576 tokens per request. One 830,000-token prompt with a 2,000-token reply costs $0.25 on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and $0.63 on Gemini 3.8 Flash. Neither has a long-prompt surcharge in our data.
- Long replies (reports, large code files)Either
- Both cap a single reply at about 65,536 tokens.
- Images, audio, video or files in the promptEither
- Both accept images, files, audio and video as well as text.
- Repeated long prompts (prompt caching)Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite bills cached input at $0.03 per 1M (10% of its input price), against $0.075 per 1M (10% of its input price) for Gemini 3.8 Flash.
- Overnight batch jobsPick Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
- Both offer batch prices; on the document summariser workload Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs $17.79 a month against $37.64.
- Self-hosting or choosing your own hostEither
- Neither has downloadable weights: both are only available through their provider’s API and cloud partners.
Criteria use only list prices, published limits and the features each provider declares. We don’t rank answer quality; test both models on your own prompts before you commit.
Specs
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Gemini 3.8 Flash side by side
| Spec | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | ||
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.30 (better) | $0.75 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $2.50 (better) | $3.75 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.03 (better) | $0.075 |
| Batch in / out | $0.15 / $1.25 (better) | $0.375 / $1.875 |
| Long-prompt price | None | None |
| Context window | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max output | 65,536 | 65,536 |
| Accepts | text, images, files, audio, video | text, images, files, audio, video |
| Image input | Yes | Yes |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning mode | Yes | Yes |
| Prompt caching | Yes | Yes |
| Structured output | Yes | Yes |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not published | Not published |
| First listed | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-02 |
Prices in US dollars per million tokens. Highlighted: the lower price or larger limit where the difference is over 5%. Features are as declared by each provider’s API; “First listed” is when our data source first listed the model. Long-prompt prices apply to the whole request once the prompt passes the threshold.
Costs
What Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemini 3.8 Flash cost for real workloads
| Workload | Tokens in / out | Requests/day | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite / month | Gemini 3.8 Flash / month | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support chatbotCalculator: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite · Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1,500 / 400 | 1,000 | $37.9450% cached | $64.4550% cached | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (1.7×) |
| RAG appCalculator: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite · Gemini 3.8 Flash | 6,000 / 500 | 500 | $41.4620% cached | $84.6320% cached | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (2.0×) |
| Coding agentCalculator: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite · Gemini 3.8 Flash | 40,000 / 2,000 | 200 | $50.8680% cached | $96.7380% cached | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (1.9×) |
| Document summariserCalculator: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite · Gemini 3.8 Flash | 8,000 / 600 | 300 | $17.79batch | $37.64batch | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (2.1×) |
Each row uses the same token counts for both models and list prices, with caching and batch discounts only where the provider publishes them. A month is 365 ÷ 12 days. The support chatbot reads 50% of its prompt from the cache. The RAG app reads 20% of its prompt from the cache. The coding agent reads 80% of its prompt from the cache. The document summariser runs as a batch job where a batch price exists. Open either model in the LLM cost calculator to change any number.
Tokenizers
Are their per-token prices comparable?
Not exactly. Each model splits text into tokens its own way, so the same prompt can be a different number of tokens on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemini 3.8 Flash, and the cheaper per-token price isn’t always the cheaper bill. Where a tokenizer isn’t public or measured we say so rather than guess.
| Model | Tokenizer | Tokens per 1,000 words | Output per 1M words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | We haven’t measured Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite’s tokenizer yet (Google’s countTokens API gives exact counts). | ||
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | GeminiOur measurement | 1,186 | $4.45 |
English prose, measured on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2026-10-11) or taken from the provider’s published words-per-token figure. Code, JSON and other languages use more tokens per word. Count your own text in the token counter or convert with tokens to words.
FAQ
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Gemini 3.8 Flash questions
Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite cheaper than Gemini 3.8 Flash?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 and $3.75. For a support chatbot handling 1,000 requests a day, that is about $37.94 a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite against $64.45 on Gemini 3.8 Flash, so Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is 1.7× cheaper there. Try your own numbers in the LLM cost calculator.
Which has the bigger context window, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Gemini 3.8 Flash?
Their context windows are about the same size. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite reads up to 1,048,576 tokens (roughly 786,432 English words) and writes up to 65,536 tokens per reply. Gemini 3.8 Flash reads up to 1,048,576 tokens (roughly 786,432 English words) and writes up to 65,536 tokens per reply. The window is shared between your prompt and the reply. Word counts use a rough 0.75 words per token; real ratios depend on the tokenizer.
Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Gemini 3.8 Flash better for coding?
We don’t publish benchmark scores, so this page can’t say which writes better code. What we can show is cost: a coding agent re-sending 40,000 tokens of context (80% cached) and writing 2,000 tokens, 200 times a day, costs about $50.86 a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and $96.73 on Gemini 3.8 Flash. Both support tool calling. Test both on tasks from your own repository.
Can Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemini 3.8 Flash read images?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts images, files, audio and video as well as text. Gemini 3.8 Flash accepts images, files, audio and video as well as text. So both can read screenshots, photos and scanned pages. This is what each provider declares for its API, not a measure of how well it works.
Are Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemini 3.8 Flash open source?
No. Neither Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite nor Gemini 3.8 Flash has published weights: you can only use them through Google’s API and their cloud partners. If you need a model you can host yourself, compare open-weight options in the model comparison table.
Do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemini 3.8 Flash count tokens the same way?
Not necessarily. Each model splits text into tokens with its own tokenizer, so the same prompt can be a different number of tokens on each, and per-token prices aren’t directly comparable. We haven’t measured Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite’s tokenizer yet (Google’s countTokens API gives exact counts). Gemini 3.8 Flash uses about 1,186 tokens per 1,000 English words (our measurement). Count your own text with the token counter or convert with tokens to words.