Google Gemini API free tier includes Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite… Catalogue date August 2026. Compare with 29 alternatives in AI / ML.
Subtypes in AI / ML:llm_api — the vendor runs language or multimodal models on its own infrastructure and sells calls to them by model name; you send a prompt and receive a completion; embeddings_api — returns a vector for text or media so it can be compared to other vectors; the vector is the output, not a completion; speech_api — converts recorded or streamed speech to text, or text to speech. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://ai.google.dev/pricing, where it says: “Our 3.1 Flash Text-to-Speech audio model optimized for price-performant, low-latency, controllable speech generation.”How we use this.
Limits, pricing history, and 29 alternatives. Catalogue date August 2026. Last updated 2026-09-22.
Google Gemini API's free tier offers Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview… We rate it stable. None of the 4 recorded changes narrowed the terms. Best for ai / ml workloads — 29 alternatives available.
⚠️ Pricing change: Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Source ↗ (effective 2026-09-18)View in changelog →
The day we last read the vendor's page. Our last read of it, on 2026-09-22, found the page different from the terms we hold. We hold no confirmation of the terms we publish — the 2026-08-18 beside this date is not one we can source to a read that confirmed them.
Free Tier Details
Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview is paid only. Google publishes no free-tier rate limits; each project's limits are shown in Google AI Studio. Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Paid, per million tokens (input/output): Gemini 3.8 Flash $0.75/$3.75 until 2026-12-31, then $1.50 input and $7.50 output from 2027-01-01 (3.7 Flash and 3.6 Flash: the same prices and dates); Gemini 3.5 Flash $1.50/$9; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $0.30/$2.50; Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite $0.25/$1.50; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview $2/$12 (prompts up to 200K tokens). The Batch API costs half the standard price; Gemini 3.8 Flash is $0.375/$1.875 per million tokens through 2026-12-31. Grounding with Google Search is not available on the free tier for Gemini 3.x models. On the paid tier, 5,000 search requests a month are free, shared across all Gemini 3.x models, then $14 per 1,000. Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API.
We read that on 2026-10-03 from https://ai.google.dev/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Google Gemini API as "gemini api" and states "$0.75" and "$1.50" and "$3.75" and "$7.50". A source check reads the cited page for the service's name and a price; the limits above are from our own record.
For developers outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, Google's terms say human reviewers may read free-tier prompts and responses, and Google says not to send sensitive, confidential or personal information on the free tier. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-04.)
Apps that serve users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the United Kingdom may use only the paid tier. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-04.)
Google is moving existing Postpay accounts to Prepay for Gemini API usage. An account that has not switched and added credits by the cutover date in its account notice has its paid service interrupted; other Google Cloud services on the billing account stay on Postpay. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)
When the Prepay balance reaches $0, every API key in every project on the billing account stops working until credits are added; requests then fail with an HTTP 402 Payment Required error. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)
Google's steps for switching to Prepay tell you to set up auto-reload on the AI Studio Billing page to top up your credit balance when it runs low. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)
When You'll Outgrow Google Gemini API's Free Tier
When your usage exceeds the free tier limits, you'll need to upgrade.
At that point, the 29 alternatives in AI / ML are each listed with the free tier they offer, so you can compare what they give you against what you have outgrown.
Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Source ↗
Before: Access to the Gemini 2.5 models was not limited to users who had used them before.
After: "we are limiting access to the 2.5 models to users who have actively used them in the past. These models are not deprecated and will continue to be served until further notice through the API. For any new projects, use our latest models: 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash." (Gemini API changelog, September 18, 2026, "Gemini 2.5 models access update")
Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-27). Retracted 2026-09-27: Google's pricing did not change near 2026-09-03. The Internet Archive's capture of ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing on 2026-08-20 already lists Gemini 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite; Google's changelog made 3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite generally available on 2026-07-21. The reading compared the page with our own description, and its figures were wrong: Gemini 3.6 Flash is free of charge on the free tier and $0.75/$3.75 per million tokens paid until 2026-12-31. Source ↗
Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite were shut down on 2026-06-01, as Google announced on 2026-02-18. Google names gemini-3.6-flash as the replacement for 2.0 Flash and gemini-3.1-flash-lite for 2.0 Flash-Lite. Source ↗
Before: Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite available on free and paid tiers
After: Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite shut down on 2026-06-01.
Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-27). Retracted 2026-09-27: nothing changed on 2026-04-08. Google's changelog has no entry between 2026-04-02 and 2026-04-14 about the free tier, and Gemini 2.5 Pro's free requests had gone to zero on 2025-12-06, which the Google Gemini record of that date covers. On 2026-05-29 a Google staff member wrote that "2.5 Flash and Pro are still available on the free tier in the API". Google's pricing page labelled 2.5 Pro "Free of charge" in every capture from 2025-09 to 2026-09, so it dates neither change. Source ↗
Google began enforcing billing-account-level spend caps on April 1, 2026. When a tier's spend cap is reached, API requests pause until the next billing month. Affects pay-as-you-go developers who may see unexpected request pausing. Source ↗
Before: No hard spend caps — usage billed without automatic pausing
After: Tier-level spend caps enforced at billing account level. Requests pause when cap is hit until next month
Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API or AI Studio. Source ↗
Before: New Google Cloud accounts could spend the $300 Welcome credit on Gemini API and AI Studio usage.
After: "New users might be granted a $300 Welcome credit in their new Google Cloud Billing accounts. If you opened your account after March 2, 2026, you can't use these credits to pay for Gemini API and AI Studio usage, but you can use them on other Google Cloud products in the Google Cloud console." (ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing)
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The list above is every one of the 3 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
How Google Gemini API compares against every one of the 29 we list, not against a selection of them. A surface with room for every member of a tied set may rotate their order. A surface with room for only some of them names none of them, because which ones it named would be the claim, and a claim seeded on the date is not the one we serve tomorrow. How we decide this.
Left out of this list: Qdrant (shares no subtype with this product), Kaggle (shares no subtype with this product), Roboflow (shares no subtype with this product), Scale AI (shares no subtype with this product), Replicate (shares no subtype with this product), Weights & Biases (shares no subtype with this product), Comet ML (shares no subtype with this product), Clarifai (we have not classified this record), Neptune.ai (we have not classified this record), Labelbox (shares no subtype with this product), Google Colab (shares no subtype with this product), Composio (shares no subtype with this product), DeepAR (none of this category's subtypes apply), OCR.Space (shares no subtype with this product), Parseur (shares no subtype with this product), Reducto (shares no subtype with this product), Tavily AI (shares no subtype with this product), paperspace (shares no subtype with this product), Arize AX (shares no subtype with this product), Audio Enhancer (none of this category's subtypes apply), Braintrust (shares no subtype with this product), Clair (none of this category's subtypes apply), Langfuse (shares no subtype with this product), LangSmith (shares no subtype with this product), Langtrace (we have not classified this record), LangWatch (shares no subtype with this product), Mediaworkbench.ai (none of this category's subtypes apply), Othor AI (none of this category's subtypes apply), Pollinations.AI (shares no subtype with this product), ReportGPT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Zenable (none of this category's subtypes apply), Exa (shares no subtype with this product), GPU-Bridge (we have not classified this record), Google Vertex AI Agent Engine (we have not classified this record), Google Vector Search 2.0 (shares no subtype with this product), Alibaba Cloud Qwen Code (none of this category's subtypes apply), E2B (shares no subtype with this product), Modal (shares no subtype with this product), ElevenLabs (we have not classified this record), Stability AI (we have not classified this record), Daytona (shares no subtype with this product), Blaxel (shares no subtype with this product), Novita Sandbox (shares no subtype with this product), Runloop (shares no subtype with this product), Mem0 (we have not classified this record), Zep (we have not classified this record), Letta (we have not classified this record), Supermemory (we have not classified this record), Cognee (we have not classified this record), Serper (shares no subtype with this product), Linkup (shares no subtype with this product), Parallel (shares no subtype with this product), Jina AI (shares no subtype with this product), You.com (shares no subtype with this product). Each is still listed in AI / ML, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The list above is every one of the 29 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.
Yes, Google Gemini API offers a free tier: Free (Reduced). Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview is paid ...
What is Google Gemini API's free tier?
Google Gemini API's free tier is called "Free (Reduced)". Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview is paid only. Google publishes no free-tier rate limits; each project's limits are shown in Google AI Studio. Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Paid, per million tokens (input/output): Gemini 3.8 Flash $0.75/$3.75 until 2026-12-31, then $1.50 input and $7.50 output from 2027-01-01 (3.7 Flash and 3.6 Flash: the same prices and dates); Gemini 3.5 Flash $1.50/$9; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $0.30/$2.50; Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite $0.25/$1.50; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview $2/$12 (prompts up to 200K tokens). The Batch API costs half the standard price; Gemini 3.8 Flash is $0.375/$1.875 per million tokens through 2026-12-31. Grounding with Google Search is not available on the free tier for Gemini 3.x models. On the paid tier, 5,000 search requests a month are free, shared across all Gemini 3.x models, then $14 per 1,000. Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API. Google's pricing page says free-tier content is used to improve Google's products. (From https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing, read 2026-10-04.) For developers outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, Google's terms say human reviewers may read free-tier prompts and responses, and Google says not to send sensitive, confidential or personal information on the free tier. (From https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-04.) Apps that serve users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the United Kingdom may use only the paid tier. (From https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-04.) Google is moving existing Postpay accounts to Prepay for Gemini API usage. An account that has not switched and added credits by the cutover date in its account notice has its paid service interrupted; other Google Cloud services on the billing account stay on Postpay. (From https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.) Impress Watch reported the cutover date as 2026-10-12. (From https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2132505.html, read 2026-10-07.) When the Prepay balance reaches $0, every API key in every project on the billing account stops working until credits are added; requests then fail with an HTTP 402 Payment Required error. (From https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.) Google's steps for switching to Prepay tell you to set up auto-reload on the AI Studio Billing page to top up your credit balance when it runs low. (From https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)
Is Google Gemini API's free tier reliable?
Google Gemini API's free tier is considered stable. None of the 4 recorded changes narrowed the terms. See the pricing history below.
Is Google Gemini API's free tier good for production?
Google Gemini API's free tier can be suitable for small production workloads and side projects. We rate it stable and it offers Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview…, so it's a reasonable starting point. None of the 4 recorded changes narrowed the terms. Monitor your usage against the limits and have an upgrade plan ready.
What changed in Google Gemini API's pricing?
Google Gemini API has had 4 recorded pricing changes. Most recently: Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Source: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/changelog (2026-09-18).
What are the best free alternatives to Google Gemini API?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 29 free alternatives to Google Gemini API in AI / ML, each listed above with its tier. Of those, 14 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 7 are demoted with the reason named, 8 are listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
When will I outgrow Google Gemini API's free tier?
When your usage exceeds the free tier limits, you'll need to upgrade. When you outgrow the free tier, evaluate paid plans against alternatives — sometimes a competitor's free tier covers what you need.
What category is Google Gemini API in?
Google Gemini API is categorized under AI / ML on AgentDeals. We list 29 other AI / ML services alongside it, every one of them on this page with its free tier and the stability we publish for it.
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