audio model comparison
Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview vs Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS
Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview and Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS are both current audio models, from Google. Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview is 63% cheaper per audio minute than Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS, $0.005 vs $0.0135.
Data verified October 12, 2026 · Dataset 2026-10-12
Side by side
Standard-tier prices in effect today. The better value in each row is highlighted.
| Fact | Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview | Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS |
|---|---|---|
| Price per audio minute | $0.005 (better) | $0.0135 |
| Provider | ||
| Release date | March 26, 2026 | September 22, 2026 |
| Access | API only | API only |
| Context window | 131,072 tokens | Not reported |
| Max output | 65,536 tokens | Not reported |
| Input | text, image, audio, video | text |
| Output | text, audio | audio |
When to choose each
Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview
Best for
- Realtime voice applications with multimodal context
Watch out for
- This preview endpoint may change before becoming stable and has input prices that vary by modality
Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS
Best for
- Narration, audiobooks and product audio where voice quality matters more than cost
- Narration and voice output attached to an existing Gemini text pipeline
- Audio generation budgeted before the 2027 price step
Watch out for
- Google doubles the rates on 2027-01-01, to $1.00 input and $18 output per 1M tokens (about $0.027 per minute)
- Audio output is billed in audio tokens, which do not convert one-for-one to text tokens, so a text-token budget does not predict this cost
- Google's pricing page lists no context window or output cap for this model, so both are recorded as unknown
- No independent speech-quality benchmark is recorded here
Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview vs Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS FAQ
Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview or Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS?
Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview is 63% cheaper per audio minute than Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS, $0.005 vs $0.0135.
Related comparisons
Production evaluation
Choosing between Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview and Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS?
Public benchmarks narrow the shortlist. We run both on your own tasks, data and cost limits, then build the routing and review controls to run the winner in production.
- A head-to-head evaluation on your real workload
- Routing between models by cost and difficulty