Gemini 3.6 Flash
$484.50 / month- Input cost
- $409.50
- Output cost
- $75.00
- Per 1,000 calls
- $242.25
- Pricing profile
- standard
Source-tracked model comparison
Gemini 3.6 Flash vs GPT-5.6 Sol: which costs less for a practical API workload?
Compare verified pricing and model limits for API pricing and workload fit across providers. The cost example uses a long-context research workload and does not assume equal model quality.
Direct cost answer: Gemini 3.6 Flash is estimated at $484.50 per month and GPT-5.6 Sol at $1,665.00 for 150,000 input tokens, 5,000 output tokens, and 2,000 monthly requests. Gemini 3.6 Flash is $1,180.50 lower under these assumptions. This does not identify a quality winner.
Tracked facts
Pricing and model limits
Prices are USD per 1M tokens under each model's verified default profile.
| Field | Gemini 3.6 Flash | GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| API access provider | OpenAI | |
| API model ID | gemini-3.6-flash | gpt-5.6-sol |
| Input / 1M | $1.50 | $5.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.15 | $0.50 |
| Output / 1M | $7.50 | $30.00 |
| Context window | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,050,000 tokens |
| Maximum output | 65,536 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Accepted input | text | text, image |
Example workload
Long-context research cost scenario
150,000 input and 5,000 output tokens per request, 2,000 monthly requests, and 10% cached input.
GPT-5.6 Sol
$1,665.00 / month- Input cost
- $1,365.00
- Output cost
- $300.00
- Per 1,000 calls
- $832.50
- Pricing profile
- standard / short context
Cost result: Gemini 3.6 Flash is $1,180.50 lower per month for these assumptions. This is a price comparison, not a model-quality ranking.
Questions to answer before choosing
- Which model meets the required quality threshold on representative inputs?
- How do output length, retries, and caching change the measured cost?
- Which provider and deployment path fit the team's operational requirements?
What this estimate leaves out
Models whose tracked context window is below the scenario input are excluded from the compatible-model table.
Latency, reliability, output quality, retries, regional processing, and provider-specific tool charges can change the practical decision.