Google I/O Review (1/5) — Gemini 3.5 'Flash' Costs 15x More Than Flash 2.0. It's Pro in Disguise (opens in new tab)

Gemini 3.5 "Flash" Costs 15x More Than Flash 2.0 — It's Pro in Disguise Google I/O 2026 Review — Part 1 of 5 The keynote crowd cheered. Sundar Pichai announced that Gemini 3.5 Flash outperforms Gemini 3.1 Pro on multiple benchmarks. The narrative was clean: the lightweight, cheap model just beat the flagship. The start of "the agentic Gemini era." Then I opened the pricing page. Flash and Pro Are Neighbors Now Model Input (per 1M tokens) Output (per 1M tokens) Gemini 3.5 Flash $1.50 $9.00 Gem...