Google launches cheaper Gemini 3.8 Flash to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic in coding

Google launched Gemini 3.8 Flash, a cheaper AI model for coding and complex reasoning, to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic. The model is priced significantly below rivals Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol. CEO Sundar Pichai announced the release on X, calling it Google's third Flash release in six weeks. He stated the model outperforms larger frontier models in autonomous engineering tasks at a fraction of the cost, with improvements over its predecessor for software engineering and multi-step reasoning. Introductory pricing is 75 cents per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens until year-end, then rising to $1.50 and $7.50. Google also released Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, its most capable cybersecurity model.