This understates the cost increase. 3.5 Flash also uses more tokens. artificialanalysis.ai shows these difference to run the whole eval, which I think is more realistic pricing:
Gemini 2.5 flash (27 score): $172 (1.0x)
Gemini 2.5 pro (35 score): $649 (3.8x)
Gemini 3.0 Flash (46 score): $278 (1.6x)
Gemini 3.5 Flash (55 score): $1,552 (9.0x or 2.4x compared to 2.5 pro)
This is a massive price increase... 5.6x compared to Gemini 3.0 Flash
In our experience, caching is not very reliable with google. We always get random cache misses that don't happen with other providers. We find OpenAI, Anthropic and Fireworks (which we use a lot) all have higher cache hit rates. So it's not only about the costs of cached token but also what kind of cached hit rate you get.
I see your point. I do find Anthropic's approach more clean though particularly when you add in mini and nano. That makes 5 models priced differently. Some share the same core name, others don't: gpt 5 nano, gpt 5 mini, gpt 5.1, gpt 5.2, gpt 5.4. And we are not even talking about thinking budget.
But generally: These are not consumer facing products and I agree that someone who uses the API should be able to figure out the price point of different models.
OpenAI now has three price points: GPT 5.1, GPT 5.2 and now GPT 5.4. There version numbers jump across different model lines with codex at 5.3, what they now call instant also at 5.3.
Anthropic are really the only ones who managed to get this under control: Three models, priced at three different levels. New models are immediately available everywhere.
Google essentially only has Preview models! The last GA is 2.5. As a developer, I can either use an outdated model or have zero insurances that the model doesn't get discontinued within weeks.
Another preview release. Does that mean the recommended model by Google for production is 2.5 Flash and Pro? Not talking about what people are actually doing but the google recommendation. Kind of crazy if that is the case
Mostly at the time of release except for 1.5 Flash which got a price drop in Aug 2024.
Google has been discontinuing older models after several months of transition period so I would expect the same for the 2.5 models. But that process only starts when the release version of 3 models is out (pro and flash are in preview right now).
Same here. They have been aggressively increasing prices with each iteration (maybe because they started so low). Still hope that is not the case this time. GPT 5.1 is priced pretty aggressively so maybe that is an incentive to keep the current gemini API prices.
The prompt caching change is awesome for any agent. Claude is far behind with increased costs for caching and manual caching checkpoints. Certainly depends on your application but prompt caching is also ignored in a lot of cost comparisons.
Since we have cursor people joining, let me bring up my constant problems around applying code changes. For background, I mostly work with "chat":
1. The apply button does not appear. This used to be mostly a problem with Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT-5 but now sometimes happens with all models. Very annoying because I have to apply manually
2. Cursor doesn't recognize which file to apply changes to and just uses the currently open file. Also very annoying and impossible to change the file to which I want to apply changes after they were applied to one file.
Voyage models are great in my experience and I am planing to test 3.5. Almost more interested in 3.5-lite though. Great price.
My concern: voyage api has been unreliable. They were bought by mango db, which makes me a little uneasy.
Gemini embeddings look like a great model but it’s in preview and there haven’t been any updates for a while (including at io). Also not sure how committed Google is to embeddings models.
Gemini 2.5 flash (27 score): $172 (1.0x)
Gemini 2.5 pro (35 score): $649 (3.8x)
Gemini 3.0 Flash (46 score): $278 (1.6x)
Gemini 3.5 Flash (55 score): $1,552 (9.0x or 2.4x compared to 2.5 pro)
This is a massive price increase... 5.6x compared to Gemini 3.0 Flash