Gemini 3 Pro image bills output at 60x input: one user's $253 lesson
Atm1n9 · reddit · 2026-10-07
Gemini 3 Pro Image charges $2/M input tokens but $120/M output — a 60x gap. Images bill as output tokens: 272 tokens for low-quality 1024px, 1056 for medium, 4160 for high, meaning the quality dropdown alone is a 15x cost swing. Running 2,000 medium-quality images a month cost the author $253 in image tokens vs 16 cents in prompt tokens. With text models the input/output gap barely matters, but with image models averaging the two rates puts you off by an order of magnitude. gpt-image-2's 6:1 ratio is far saner — worth checking your default quality setting.
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