What Does Nano Banana 2 Cost?
Nano Banana 2, officially Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, bills $0.50 per million input tokens and $60 per million image output tokens. Google's published rates work that out to roughly $0.045 per image at 0.5K and roughly $0.151 per image at 4K.
Those are the two ends of the band Google actually publishes. Everything between them scales with pixel count, since an image is billed as output tokens and a bigger image is simply more tokens. The pricing page confirms the token rates and that band, but not a tidy per resolution conversion for every step in between, so any article quoting an exact cent figure for 1K or 2K is interpolating rather than citing. Batch pricing is listed at 50% off.
The launch date is where the public record goes soft. No single announcement date for Nano Banana 2 holds up cleanly across sources. The model appears to have arrived in roughly the May to June 2026 window, and a "Nano Banana 2 Lite" variant shows up in Google's own blog listing under June 2026. Treat any specific launch day quoted elsewhere as reported, not confirmed.
AI Perks tracks credit programs across the model and compute layers an image product bills against, including the Google for Startups Cloud Program.
The Per Image Numbers, and Where They Stop
At list price a thousand Nano Banana 2 images cost about $45 at 0.5K and about $151 at 4K. On Batch, about $22.50 and about $75.50.
| Path | Per image | Per 1,000 images | On Batch per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano Banana 2 at 0.5K | about $0.045 | about $45.00 | about $22.50 |
| Nano Banana 2 at 4K | about $0.151 | about $151.00 | about $75.50 |
Two things fall out of that.
Resolution is a 3.4x lever. $0.151 against $0.045, for the identical model, prompt and call. No model swap moves the bill that far.
Batch is a flat halving with no quality cost. You pay in latency, not in output. Note the ordering most teams get backwards: Batch at 4K still costs more than list price at 0.5K.
Measure rather than model one thing. Input bills at $0.50 per million tokens whether it is text or image, but the token count of an uploaded image depends on its size, and the published rates give no flat per image figure for image inputs. Edit-heavy products should meter a real week of traffic instead of assuming text-to-image economics.
Current credit programs that offset these bills are listed at getaiperks.com.
Is Nano Banana 2 Free?
Yes on consumer surfaces. The model is free to use inside the Gemini app and Google AI Studio. Programmatic use bills at the published token rates.
That distinction is the difference between a hobby and an invoice, and it gets flattened constantly:
Consumer surfaces are free. The Gemini app and Google AI Studio both generate Nano Banana 2 images at no charge, which is the sane way to judge output quality before committing a product to it.
Production usage meters. Once calls run through your own code, $0.50 per million in and $60 per million out apply.
Free access is the norm across Google's current lineup rather than an exception. Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite both carry free tiers, and Gemini Omni is bundled into the Gemini app's free plan. Credits are the practical extension once you outgrow that, and they are tracked at getaiperks.com.
How Nano Banana 2 Sits Against the Rest of Google's Menu
Nano Banana 2 is cheap on input and expensive on output, which is the correct shape for an image model and a misleading shape to compare against a text model on headline rate alone.
| Model | Input per 1M | Output per 1M |
|---|---|---|
| Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) | $0.50 | $60 image output |
| Gemini Omni Flash | $1.50 text, image, video, audio | $9 text, $17.50 video |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | $0.75 introductory, $1.50 standard | $3.75 introductory, $7.50 standard |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | $0.30 | $2.50 |
Read the output column carefully. The $60 rate is not Nano Banana 2 being expensive next to Gemini 3.6 Flash at $3.75; it is an image being worth vastly more tokens than a sentence. Compare per finished artifact, not per million tokens.
Two notes off the same table. Gemini 3.6 Flash's $0.75 and $3.75 are introductory rates running through 31 December 2026, after which the standard $1.50 and $7.50 apply, so any pipeline using it for prompt expansion or captioning around your image calls has a price increase already scheduled. And Gemini Omni Flash prices video output at $17.50 per million tokens, about $0.10 per second at 720p, which explains why a ten second clip costs more than a hundred stills.
Scheduled price step-ups are among the quietest line items in an AI budget, which is why AI Perks tracks program terms rather than launch announcements.
Nano Banana 2 vs GPT Image 2
OpenAI's GPT Image 2 is reported at $30 per million image output tokens against Google's $60, but the two do not bill on comparable token accounting, so the headline gap is not a 2x saving.
The reported GPT Image 2 rates are $5 per million text input tokens, $8 per million image input tokens, $2 per million cached image input tokens and $30 per million image output tokens. Those figures come from secondary coverage rather than a confirmed OpenAI pricing page, and the reported launch date conflicts across sources, with most placing it at 24 June 2026 and at least one placing it in April 2026. Treat the whole block as reported, not confirmed.
Three things follow.
Input is the visible difference. Google charges $0.50 per million input tokens across text and image. GPT Image 2 is reported at $5 for text input and $8 for image input, ten to sixteen times higher. For an editing product that ships a source image into every call, input is not a rounding error and the ordering can invert.
Neither vendor prices flat per image. Both meter tokens, so a per image comparison only exists once you fix resolution on both sides and measure it.
Both have a consumer free path. GPT Image 2 is reported as available through the ChatGPT free tier under rate limits, mirroring Nano Banana 2's free access in the Gemini app.
Startup credit programs exist on both sides, OpenAI for Startups and the Google for Startups Cloud Program, though both are general compute and API programs rather than image specific ones. Current terms are tracked at getaiperks.com.
What a Real Image Bill Looks Like
Budget on cost per accepted image, not per generated image. Wherever users regenerate before they keep one, list price understates real cost by exactly that multiple.
Take a hypothetical product serving 10,000 accepted images a month at a 3x regeneration rate. That is 30,000 actual generations:
| Path | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Nano Banana 2 at 0.5K | about $1,350 |
| Nano Banana 2 at 0.5K on Batch | about $675 |
| Nano Banana 2 at 4K | about $4,530 |
| Nano Banana 2 at 4K on Batch | about $2,265 |
One model, one prompt, one month, and a spread of roughly $675 to $4,530 decided entirely by resolution and queueing. That is a 6.7x range no procurement conversation ever touches.
Input tokens barely register for text-to-image work. A hundred token prompt at $0.50 per million costs $0.00005, about 0.1% of a single 0.5K image. Editing changes that, because you send an image in as well at the same input rate.
How to Cut the Bill Before You Pay It
Three levers, in descending order of size: resolution, Batch, then credits.
Resolution. A 3.4x spread across the published band. Most product surfaces display images far smaller than they generate them, which makes this the largest saving available and the one teams check last.
Batch. A flat 50% off, listed by Google. The cost is latency, not quality. Anything queued, backfilled or generated ahead of display should be on it.
Credits. The two levers above compress the bill. Credits offset what remains, and they apply across the compute and storage layers an image pipeline touches, not just the model call. See what is currently available at getaiperks.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Nano Banana 2 cost per image?
Roughly $0.045 at 0.5K rising to roughly $0.151 at 4K, derived from Google's published rates of $0.50 per million input tokens and $60 per million image output tokens. Batch pricing is listed at 50% off, which halves both ends of that band. Credits that offset image bills are tracked at getaiperks.com.
Is Nano Banana 2 free to use?
Free on consumer surfaces. The Gemini app and Google AI Studio both generate Nano Banana 2 images at no charge. Programmatic usage bills at the published token rates.
When was Nano Banana 2 released?
No single launch date holds up across sources. The model appears to have shipped in roughly the May to June 2026 window, and a Nano Banana 2 Lite variant appears in Google's own blog listing under June 2026. Any exact launch day quoted elsewhere should be read as reported rather than confirmed.
Is there a cheaper Nano Banana 2 tier?
A Nano Banana 2 Lite variant is referenced in Google's blog listing, but its token rates are not part of the published pricing covered here, so no per image figure for it is quoted on this page. Price your workload on the standard rates and treat any Lite number found elsewhere as unconfirmed.
Which Google model should surround the image call?
For prompt expansion, captioning or moderation around a generation, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the cheapest published option at $0.30 per million input and $2.50 per million output. Gemini 3.6 Flash costs more at $0.75 and $3.75 introductory, reverting to $1.50 and $7.50 after 31 December 2026, and reportedly uses about 17% fewer tokens than Gemini 3.5 Flash for the same work.
How does Nano Banana 2 compare to GPT Image 2?
GPT Image 2 is reported at $30 per million image output tokens against Google's $60, but also at $5 per million text input and $8 per million image input against Google's flat $0.50. The two bill on different token accounting, and the OpenAI figures come from secondary coverage rather than a confirmed vendor page.
Generate the images. Let someone else pay for the tokens.