Google Gemini API vs Google Vertex AI
Same workloads, both price lists, refreshed daily. List prices tie on nearly all 23 shared line items today, so the choice comes down to platform differences (routing, limits, tooling), summarized below.
Google Gemini API
Gemini models with the most generous free tier of any frontier lab and very cheap Flash-class models. Vertex AI offers the same models with enterprise controls.
- Generous free tier
- Cheapest frontier-adjacent small models
- Native multimodal
Google Vertex AI
Gemini plus 100+ models in Google Cloud's ML platform, with enterprise governance, grounding and tuning pipelines..
- Enterprise governance
- Grounding with Google Search
- Model Garden variety
Shared models, priced by both
List prices refreshed 2026-08-23 ยท input $/1M tokens| Model | Google Gemini API in/out | Google Vertex AI in/out | Cheaper input |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini-2.0-Flash-Lite | $0.075 / $0.300 | $0.075 / $0.300 | tie |
| Gemini-2.0-Flash-Lite-001 | $0.075 / $0.300 | $0.075 / $0.300 | tie |
| Gemini-2.0-Flash-001 | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.150 / $0.600 | Google Gemini API |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.100 / $0.400 | tie |
| Gemini-2.0-Flash | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.100 / $0.400 | tie |
| Gemini-2.5-Flash-Lite-Preview-09-2025 | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.100 / $0.400 | tie |
| Gemini-2.5-Flash-Lite-Preview-06-17 | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.100 / $0.400 | tie |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | $0.250 / $1.50 | $0.250 / $1.50 | tie |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.300 / $2.50 | $0.300 / $2.50 | tie |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | $0.300 / $2.50 | $0.300 / $2.50 | tie |
| Gemini-2.5-Flash-Preview-09-2025 | $0.300 / $2.50 | $0.300 / $2.50 | tie |
| Gemini-Robotics-Er-1.5-Preview | $0.300 / $2.50 | $0.300 / $2.50 | tie |
| Gemini 3 Flash Preview | $0.500 / $3.00 | $0.500 / $3.00 | tie |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | $0.750 / $3.75 | $0.750 / $3.75 | tie |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | $0.750 / $3.75 | $0.750 / $3.75 | tie |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| Gemini-2.5-Pro-Preview-Tts | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| Gemini-2.5-Computer-Use-Preview-10-2025 | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | $1.50 / $9.00 | $1.50 / $9.00 | tie |
| Gemini-Omni-Flash-Preview | $1.50 / $9.00 | $1.50 / $9.00 | tie |
| Gemini-3-Pro | $2.00 / $12.00 | $2.00 / $12.00 | tie |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $2.00 / $12.00 | $2.00 / $12.00 | tie |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools | $2.00 / $12.00 | $2.00 / $12.00 | tie |
Cheaper-on-count is a tally of listed prices, not a quality verdict: throughput, reliability and quantization differ between providers. Disclosure.