Gemini 3.8 Flash on the Gemini API free tier: the rate card in Google's own words, the three-line switch for any OpenAI-style tool, what Google does with free-tier prompts, and every catch
The companion to the reel. Google's pricing page lists Gemini 3.8 Flash — released September 2, 2026 — as "Free of charge" on the Gemini API free tier, with a paid tier at $0.75 in and $3.75 out per million tokens, a 1,048,576-token context, and text, image, video, audio and PDF input. New accounts begin on the free tier and no card enters the flow until you choose to upgrade. PAGE 1 — what it is in Google's own words, the five steps from a Google account to a working key, and the first request. PAGE 2 — the rate card: free tier versus paid tier for 3.8 Flash line by line (input, output, caching, grounding, batch, and the row that matters: 'Used to improve our products'), plus the price step on January 1, 2027, and which other models are free of charge. PAGE 3 — the catch, quoted from the API terms: free-tier content is used to improve Google's products and machine learning technologies, human reviewers may read your input and output, and Google's own instruction not to submit sensitive, confidential or personal information — what that means in practice, the EEA/UK/Switzerland exception, and how the $5 prepay upgrade changes the terms. PAGE 4 — point your tools at it: the three-line OpenAI-SDK switch in Python and JavaScript, the raw REST call, and six things a free key is genuinely good for. PAGE 5 — eight catches, each quoted from the page it came from, starting with the one nobody prints: Google no longer publishes a free-tier rate-limit table. PAGE 6 — the proof checklist. Every figure is quoted from the page it names, read September 19, 2026. No key was created and no request was sent for this card. Independent guide from Hyperautomation Labs — not affiliated with Google or Anthropic.
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