Billing account ID: 01CB7F-19F1B2-1905..
Period: July 21–29, 2026
Our research tools call the Gemini API for short, JSON-only classification prompts
(temperature=0, expected ~50 output tokens per call), using the gemini-flash-latest
alias. Around July 21 this alias began resolving to Gemini 3.6 Flash, which (a) has
roughly 5x higher token prices ($1.50/$7.50 per M) and (b) enables thinking by default,
with thinking tokens billed at the output rate. As a result, even “answer with JSON
only” calls silently consumed hundreds to thousands of hidden output tokens each.
Impact: ~47,800 short calls consumed approximately $220–250 of prepaid credits.
At the flash-tier prices previously in effect, the same workload was budgeted at ~$21.
Nothing changed on our side; the cost increase came entirely from the silent alias
repointing plus the thinking-on default.
We have since pinned explicit model versions (gemini-2.5-flash-lite) and set
thinking_budget=0 on all calls.
Request: a goodwill credit adjustment for the excess consumption caused by the silent
repointing. Happy to provide usage screenshots from the AI Studio usage page.