Gemini 3.6 Flash vs GPT-4.1 — Side-by-side pricing
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google) and GPT-4.1 (OpenAI).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | Gemini 3.6 Flash | GPT-4.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $1.50 | $2.00 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $7.50 | $8.00 |
| Context caching | Yes — 90% off cached tokens | No |
| Batch API discount | 50% off | 50% off |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Tokenizer | Gemini tokenizer | o200k_base (tiktoken) |
ⓘ GPT-4.1: No longer listed on OpenAI's pricing page. Price could not be re-verified from a vendor source; treat as indicative.
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
Gemini 3.6 Flash
$2.2500
Input: $0.7500 +Output: $1.5000
GPT-4.1
$2.6000
Input: $1.0000 +Output: $1.6000
Gemini 3.6 Flash is 13% cheaper for this workload — saving $0.3500 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $1.50/1M input and $7.50/1M output tokens, it costs $2.2500 versus $2.6000 for GPT-4.1 — a 13% difference. Costs scale linearly with request volume, so larger workloads amplify this gap.
Gemini 3.6 Flash supports a 1M token context window. GPT-4.1 supports a 1M token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
Gemini 3.6 Flash supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It offers a 50% Batch API discount. GPT-4.1 does not support context caching. It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
No, they use different tokenizers. Gemini 3.6 Flash uses the Gemini tokenizer, while GPT-4.1 uses o200k_base (tiktoken). Different tokenizers split text differently, so the same prompt will produce different token counts on each model — the effective cost difference may be larger or smaller than the per-token price difference alone suggests.
Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google): $1.5 input / $7.5 output per 1M tokens. GPT-4.1 (OpenAI): $2 input / $8 output per 1M tokens. Rates shown before caching or batch discounts.
For an 80% output / 20% input workload — typical for code generation or long-form writing — Gemini 3.6 Flash costs $6.3000 per 1M total tokens and GPT-4.1 costs $6.8000. Gemini 3.6 Flash is 7% cheaper for this pattern. For your exact ratio, paste a real prompt into the calculator above.
Gemini 3.6 Flash has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages of standard text. GPT-4.1 has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages. (Estimates assume ~0.75 words per token.)
Calculate costs for your actual prompt
Paste your prompt into the calculator and get exact token counts using each model's real tokenizer — all in your browser.
Open calculator