Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (via Gemini API)
OCR to markdown with Google's cheapest Gemini vision model via the Gemini Developer API; cost derived from token prices.
Teams already on Google's AI stack can use the Gemini Developer API as a token-priced OCR engine, working out at about $1.555 per 1,000 pages, or roughly $0.78 through the Batch API. Most of that comes from output tokens at $1.50 per million, so long markdown output pushes the bill up. Two catches stand out: there is no EU processing on the Developer API (Vertex AI has EU regions at separate prices), and free-tier content may be used to improve Google products.
- Headquarters
- 🇺🇸 United States
- Parent jurisdiction
- 🇺🇸 United States (parent: Alphabet)
- EU self-serve plan
- No / not documented
- GDPR DPA
- Yes
- Billing
- payg
- Free tier
- Free tier with lower rate limits; free-tier content may be used to improve Google products.
- Open source
- No
- Website
- ai.google.dev
- Source last checked
- 2026-10-06
- Pricing evidence
- Modeled rates
Pricing
Published rates converted using workload assumptions. Read the notes. Token cost assumes a 1,000×1,400 px page, a 300-token prompt and 800 output tokens. Extraction quality and retries vary. How to read these estimates.
| 1k additional pages |
|---|
| $1.555 |
Allowances, plan limits & calculation details
Rates are shown at their recorded precision. A zero means no charge in this calculation; the vendor may charge for things we leave out. See the notes for usage assumptions and currency conversions.
- Base fee / month
- $0
- Included pages / month (thousands)
- 0
- 1k additional pages
- $1.555
Derived from token prices ($0.25 in / $1.50 out per M). Assumptions per page (same for all vision-LLM rows): the vendor's documented image-token count for a ~1,000x1,400 px page image, plus a 300-token prompt, and ~800 output tokens of markdown. Gemini 3 bills an image at the default media resolution as 1,120 tokens (PDF input defaults to 560 + native text). Per 1,000 pages: input 1,000 x (1,120 + 300) = 1.42M tokens x $0.25 = $0.355; output 0.8M x $1.50 = $1.20; total $1.555. Batch API halves this (~$0.78). Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite ($0.30/$2.50) works out to $2.43, Gemini 3.8 Flash ($0.75/$3.75, promotional until 2026-12-31) to $4.07. No EU processing on the Developer API; Vertex AI offers EU regions at separate prices.
Managed alternatives
At 100K pages / month. Adjust usage and requirements.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (via Gemini API): $1,866/yr estimated.
- GPT-6 Luna (via OpenAI API): $719/yr estimated · $1,147/yr bill differenceEstimated ratesPage cost uses an assumed image-token multiplier plus 300 prompt and 800 output tokens. Confirm actual token usage.
- Mistral Small 3.2 (via Scaleway Generative APIs): $845/yr estimated · $1,021/yr bill differenceModeled ratesToken cost assumes a 1,000×1,400 px page, a 300-token prompt and 800 output tokens. Extraction quality and retries vary.
- Qwen3-VL-235B (via DeepInfra): $1,244/yr estimated · $622/yr bill differenceModeled ratesToken cost assumes a 1,000×1,400 px page, a 300-token prompt and 800 output tokens. Extraction quality and retries vary.
No cheaper managed estimate matches your filters. Adjust your usage or compare with your actual contract bill.
The price difference leaves out migration costs, operating costs and any features you’d need to replace.
Self-hosted options
Operating cost is not estimated. These options are not counted as savings against managed services.
Other OCR & document parsing comparisons
- Amazon Textract vs Azure AI Document Intelligence (Layout)
- Amazon Textract vs Mistral OCR
- LlamaParse (LlamaIndex) vs Mistral OCR
Found a wrong rate or plan restriction? Report a correction with a current source.