Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash takes on bigger AI models at a lower cost

Google has introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash, available to developers today, and a gated sibling, Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, reserved for vetted security teams.

“Our 3rd Flash release in just 6 wks,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on X, adding that it makes sizable gains over 3.7 Flash in software engineering, agentic work, and multi-step reasoning. On the DeepSWE v1.1 benchmark, Google says it beats most larger frontier models at solving complex engineering problems end to end, at a lower cost.

Tulsee Doshi, Google’s senior director of product management, and Raluca Ada Popa, Gemini Security Lead at Google DeepMind, trace the improvements in part to how the model handles a task.

“3.8 Flash works harder,” the two wrote, citing extra reasoning steps and repeated tool calls before it settles on an answer. Anyone who prioritizes lower cost over depth can reduce the model’s effort setting or stay on 3.7 Flash.

Access to Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber runs through a new program called Fairwind, built for trusted government authorities, critical infrastructure operators, and software maintainers hunting vulnerabilities in large codebases.

“We have invested in vulnerability fixing from the start,” Doshi and Popa said, placing patching ahead of offensive work like exploitation. Chrome Security reported that 3.8 Flash Cyber produced 2.6 times more correct patches than the best commercial models, while Google’s Cloud Vulnerability Research team says it found a critical foundational vulnerability in under two hours — work that would normally take months.

Standard 3.8 Flash carries safeguards against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear misuse, along with restrictions on cyber-offense uses. The Cyber version uses more permissive cybersecurity safeguards, which is why Google kept it behind Fairwind instead of shipping it to every developer.

Doshi and Popa also said the Gemini 3.8 models made a “significant leap” in prompt-injection robustness, citing measurements by AI security company Gray Swan.

Gemini 3.8 Flash launches at the same introductory price as 3.7 Flash, at $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens.

The model is available to developers through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio, Google Antigravity, Android Studio, and Stitch. Enterprises can access it through Gemini Enterprise, while Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can use it in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Google Search, and Gemini in Google Sheets.