Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
The cheapest, fastest member of the Gemini line, tuned for simple high-volume tasks at minimal cost. Keeps the large context window while trimming reasoning depth.
At a glance
Released
May 12, 2026
Provider
Google
Context window
1,000,000 tokens
Max output
64,000 tokens
Modalities
Text + image → text
Knowledge cutoff
October 2025
API model ID
gemini-3.5-flash-liteLicense
Proprietary (API only)
Pricing
Standard
Input$0.30 / 1M
Output$2.50 / 1M
A typical 1,500-token prompt with a 650-token answer costs ≈ $0.002 on the standard tier. Run your own prompt through the calculator →
Best use cases
Bulk classification
Routes, labels and filters very large volumes of text at the lowest per-token cost.
Lightweight assistants
Backs simple in-product helpers where speed and price matter most.
Preprocessing
Cleans, normalizes and tags data before handing it to a stronger model.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Lowest cost in the family
- Very fast
- Large context for its price
Limitations
- Limited reasoning ability
- No audio or video input
How to test it
- No-code: open gemini.google.com and pick Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite from the model switcher — no API key needed.
- Playground: sign in to Google AI Studio and run prompts in the workbench, then copy the generated code.
- API: create a key in Google AI Studio and call the API (example below).
curl "https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-3.5-flash-lite:generateContent?key=$GEMINI_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"contents": [{"parts": [{"text": "Explain tokenization in one paragraph."}]}]}'