Gemini Flash doubles in price on 1 January, and Google credits only pay for Google models
Gemini 3.7 Flash costs $0.75 and $3.75 per million tokens through 31 December, then $1.50 and $7.50. Google startup credits only cover Gemini and Gemma.
Google released Gemini 3.7 Flash on 13 August at an introductory price. That price runs through 31 December 2026, and on 1 January the model costs twice as much.
A million input tokens is $0.75 today and a million output tokens is $3.75. From 1 January the same volumes cost $1.50 and $7.50. Dropping back to the previous model does not keep you on the old rate: Gemini 3.6 Flash carries the same prices and the same dates, and Gemini 3.5 Flash is permanently priced higher already, at $1.50 and $9.00 per million.
For a founder running on Google credits this lands directly on the bill. Google for Startups Cloud credits pay only for Google's own models, Gemini and Gemma. Third-party models cannot be bought with them and go onto the regular invoice. Flash is therefore exactly where the credits go.
Credits are denominated in dollars, not in tokens. So on 1 January the same balance buys half as many Flash requests. The program grants credits for up to two years, which means a grant awarded now outlives the date: part of the balance gets spent at one price and part at the other.
Two things follow. Budget 2027 at 2027 prices — take today's number and you are off by exactly half. And any workload whose timing is yours to choose is cheaper before the year ends: reprocessing an archive, evaluation runs, bulk labelling. In batch mode a million input tokens costs $0.375 now against $0.75 in January.
The full terms of the Google program are on the Google Cloud card. Why the clock on credits matters more than the headline sum is in our guide to credits expiring.