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Van Data Team

text model comparison

Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Gemini 4 Hydrogen

Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen are both current text models, from Google. Gemini 3.8 Flash is 50% cheaper per 1M input tokens than Gemini 4 Hydrogen, $0.75 vs $1.50. On Arena Text, Gemini 3.8 Flash scores 1497 Elo and Gemini 4 Hydrogen 1490 Elo (Arena, measured November 11, 2026). Both accept 1,048,576 tokens of context.

Higher Arena Text
Gemini 3.8 Flash1497 Elo against 1490 Elo
Lower price per 1M input tokens
Gemini 3.8 Flash$0.75 against $1.50
Newer release
Gemini 4 HydrogenNov 2026 against Sep 2026

Data verified November 15, 2026 · Dataset 2026-11-15

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Side by side

Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen, line by line

Prices in effect today, compared at the same tier wherever both list one. The better value in each row is highlighted.

FactGemini 3.8 FlashGemini 4 Hydrogen
Price
Price per 1M input tokens$0.75 (better)$1.50
Price per 1M output tokens$3.75 (better)$7.50
Independent benchmarks
Arena Text1497 Elo (#5 of 50) (better)1490 Elo (#7 of 50)
Arena WebDev1583 Elo (#28 of 45)1704 Elo (#7 of 45) (better)
GPQA Diamond95.4% (#5 of 40)Not measured
FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2)68.4% (#25 of 39)Not measured
SimpleQA Verified69.7% (#8 of 36)Not measured
Specs
ProviderGoogleGoogle
Release dateSeptember 2, 2026November 12, 2026
AccessAPI onlyAPI only
Context window1,048,576 tokens1,048,576 tokens
Max output65,536 tokens65,536 tokens
Inputtext, image, audio, videotext, image, audio, video
Outputtexttext

Scores:Arena · 2026-11-15Epoch AI · 2026-11-11

Open both in the interactive comparison

Charts

Against every current text model

Where Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen land among the current models of their task, on every independent benchmark, on price and on context.

Where each stands

On Arena Text, Gemini 3.8 Flash ranks #5 and Gemini 4 Hydrogen #7 of 50 current models. Each bar is the share of current models it beats: on score, price and context.

Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen among the current text models, one row per benchmark, price and context window.

Independent benchmarks

Arena Text

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#5of 50

1,497 Elo · ahead of 90%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen:#7of 50

1,490 Elo · ahead of 88%

Arena WebDev

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#28of 45

1,583 Elo · ahead of 39%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen:#7of 45

1,704 Elo · ahead of 86%

GPQA Diamond

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#5of 40

95.4% · ahead of 87%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen: Not scored

FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2)

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#25of 39

68.4% · ahead of 37%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen: Not scored

SimpleQA Verified

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#8of 36

69.7% · ahead of 77%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen: Not scored

Price and context

Price per 1M input tokens

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#23of 58

$0.75 · cheaper than 61%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen:#32of 58

$1.50 · cheaper than 44%

Price per 1M output tokens

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#27of 58

$3.75 · cheaper than 54%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen:#36of 58

$7.50 · cheaper than 37%

Context window

Gemini 3.8 Flash:#12of 68

1.05M tokens · longer than 61%

Gemini 4 Hydrogen:#12of 68

1.05M tokens · longer than 61%

Scores fromArena · 2026-11-15Epoch AI · 2026-11-11

Quality against price

Arena Text · measured November 11, 2026

Gemini 3.8 Flash scores 1,497 at $1.50; Gemini 4 Hydrogen scores 1,490 at $3 (blended price per 1M tokens). The line joins the current models no other beats on both price and Arena Text score; hover any point to name it.

Quality against priceArena Text score against price for 42 text models, Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen marked.1,2501,3001,3501,4001,4501,5001,550$0.30$1$3$10MOST ATTRACTIVE QUADRANTMedian price $2.58Median 1,473Blended price per 1M tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scaleArena Text (Elo)Gemini 3.8 FlashGemini 4 Hydrogen
Quality against price: the data
Arena Text score against price for 42 text models, Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen marked.
ModelProviderBlended price per 1M tokensArena Text (Elo)
Gemini 4 CarbonGoogle$41,526
Gemini 4 ArgonGoogle$41,522
Muse WonderMeta$81,511
Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic$81,507
Gemini 3.8 FlashGoogle$1.501,497
Muse Spark 1.3Meta$21,497
Gemini 4 HydrogenGoogle$31,490
Kimi K3Moonshot Kimi$61,487
GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI$81,485
Kimi K3.1 ProMoonshot Kimi$41,485
Qwen3.8-MaxAlibaba Qwen$31,484
Gemini 3.6 FlashGoogle$31,483
GLM-5.3Z.ai$2.151,482
GPT-5.5OpenAI$111,481
GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI$41,481
MiMo-V2.6-ProXiaomi MiMo$0.541,480
GPT-5.4OpenAI$5.631,475
DeepSeek-V4.1-FlashDeepSeek$0.521,475
GLM-5.3-FlashZ.ai$0.241,475
GPT-6 AstraOpenAI$201,474
Gemini 3 Flash PreviewGoogle$1.131,473
Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic$41,473
Grok 4.20xAI$1.561,472
GPT-5.6 TerraOpenAI$4.501,468
Grok 4.5xAI$31,466
DeepSeek-V4-ProDeepSeek$1.981,464
Grok 4.6xAI$31,457
GPT-6 SolOpenAI$41,457
Gemini 3.5 Flash-LiteGoogle$0.851,455
GPT-5.6 LunaOpenAI$0.451,453
Step 5 PreviewStepFun$1.431,449
MiMo-V2.6-FlashXiaomi MiMo$0.181,448
Grok 4.7xAI$31,443
Grok 4.3xAI$1.561,442
GPT-6 LunaOpenAI$0.201,441
Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic$0.201,421
Mistral Large 4Mistral AI$1.051,420
GPT-4.1OpenAI$3.501,415
Inkling 2 SmallThinking Machines Lab$0.471,412
Solar Pro 4Upstage$0.521,387
GPT-4.1 miniOpenAI$0.701,383
GPT-4.1 nanoOpenAI$0.181,322

Cost

What each costs

Example workloads at each provider's listed rates, then every other rate either one lists. The cheaper figure in each row is highlighted.

The same work, priced

For 10M input and 2M output tokens, Gemini 4 Hydrogen costs 2.0 times as much as Gemini 3.8 Flash, at each provider's listed rates.

What Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen cost for the same work, at the rates each provider lists.

  • 10M input and 2M output tokens

    Gemini 4 Hydrogen costs 2.0× as much

    Gemini 3.8 Flash
    $15
    Gemini 4 Hydrogen
    $30

  • The same, with 9M of the input tokens cached

    Gemini 4 Hydrogen costs 1.9× as much

    Gemini 3.8 Flash
    $8.93
    Gemini 4 Hydrogen
    $17.18

  • The same, through the batch API

    Gemini 4 Hydrogen costs 2.0× as much

    Gemini 3.8 Flash
    $7.50
    Gemini 4 Hydrogen
    $15
Workload or rateGemini 3.8 FlashGemini 4 Hydrogen
Example workloads
10M input and 2M output tokens$15 (better)$30
The same, with 9M of the input tokens cached$8.93 (better)$17.18
The same, through the batch API$7.50 (better)$15
Other listed rates
1M input tokens, cached$0.075$0.075
1M input tokens, batch$0.375 (better)$0.75
1M output tokens, batch$1.875 (better)$3.75
1M input tokens, priority$1.35 (better)$2.70
1M output tokens, priority$6.75 (better)$13.50

Your own bill will differ. These figures use list prices and example workloads. The AI Model Cost Audit reviews your real usage, shortlists models that score as well for each task for less, and estimates the savings.

Launch price $100, regular price $150

See the cost audit

Verdict

When to choose each

Gemini 3.8 Flash

Where it leads

  • Lower input and output prices, $0.75 and $3.75 vs $1.50 and $7.50 per 1M tokens
  • Higher Arena Text score, 1497 Elo vs 1490 Elo
  • Cheaper batch processing, $7.50 vs $15 for 10M input and 2M output tokens

Best for

  • High-volume agentic and coding workloads where per-token cost dominates the decision
  • Multimodal pipelines that need audio, video and PDF input in one model

Watch out for

  • The listed price is promotional and ends 31 December 2026; on 1 January 2027 input and output both double, to $1.50 and $7.50, and cached input goes from $0.075 to $0.15
  • Output pricing is billed inclusive of thinking tokens, so reasoning-heavy prompts cost more than the output length suggests
  • Google’s published comparisons are against its own previous Flash release and were not independently reproduced here
  • Google now points Gemini 3.8 Flash users to Gemini 4 Hydrogen, released November 12, 2026, as the recommended upgrade, with migration guidance
Full Gemini 3.8 Flash profile

Gemini 4 Hydrogen

Where it leads

  • Higher Arena WebDev score, 1704 Elo vs 1583 Elo

Best for

  • Everyday coding, tool-using agents and parallel sub-agents at a mid-tier price
  • Document, chart and video workflows over very long multimodal inputs

Watch out for

  • In Google's own table Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher on Terminal-Bench 4.1 (63.9% against 57.0%), OSWorld-2.1 (83.9% against 77.6%) and Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (59.9% against 51.4%)
  • A request returns at most 65,536 output tokens by default; longer outputs, up to 1,048,576 tokens, need Google long-decode mode, and only implicit context caching is supported
  • Arena places it below Claude Sonnet 5.5 on WebDev (1704 against 1772) and just below Gemini 3.8 Flash on Arena Text (1490 against 1497), on 4,741 text and 1,997 WebDev votes so far; Epoch AI has not measured it yet
Full Gemini 4 Hydrogen profile

From benchmark to production

Building on Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 4 Hydrogen?

Public scores rarely hold on your own data. We test both models on your real tasks, then build the agent or pipeline around the one that wins.

AI Model Cost AuditLaunch price $100, regular price $150

See the cost auditAI agent development

FAQ

Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Gemini 4 Hydrogen FAQ

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 4 Hydrogen?

Gemini 3.8 Flash is 50% cheaper per 1M input tokens than Gemini 4 Hydrogen, $0.75 vs $1.50. For 10M input and 2M output tokens, Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $15 and Gemini 4 Hydrogen $30 at standard rates.

Which is cheaper with prompt caching, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 4 Hydrogen?

Gemini 3.8 Flash charges $0.075 per 1M cached input tokens, 90% below its standard input rate, and Gemini 4 Hydrogen $0.075, 95% below. With 9M of 10M input tokens cached and 2M output tokens, Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $8.93 and Gemini 4 Hydrogen $17.18.

Which scores higher on independent benchmarks, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 4 Hydrogen?

Gemini 3.8 Flash leads on Arena Text, 1497 Elo to 1490 Elo; Gemini 4 Hydrogen leads on Arena WebDev, 1704 Elo to 1583 Elo. Scores are independent evaluations, not either vendor's launch figures.

Which has the larger context window, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 4 Hydrogen?

Both accept 1,048,576 tokens of context. Both return up to 65,536 tokens per response.

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Further reading

More on Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen

Articles on Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen

Related comparisons

Production evaluation

Choosing between Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Hydrogen?

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
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