Model Details
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the most cost-efficient model in the Gemini text family, intended for work you do a lot of rather than work that is hard: classification, translation, extraction, tagging, routing and other high-volume data processing.
Served through the **OpenAI-compatible chat completions API**:
``` POST https://queue.modelrunner.run/google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite/chat/completions ```
Point any OpenAI SDK or OpenAI-compatible tool at `base_url = https://queue.modelrunner.run/google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite` with your ModelRunner API key. Streaming, tool calling and JSON mode all work.
Pick this tier when volume matters more than depth of reasoning; step up to a Flash or thinking model when answers need multi-step reasoning.
Billing is per token from the model's own reported usage, thinking tokens included. Cached input is billed at a reduced rate.
The request body follows OpenAI's chat completions shape: a `messages` array of `system`/`user`/`assistant`/`tool` turns, an optional `max_tokens` cap, a `seed` for best-effort determinism, and up to four `stop` sequences. Pass an OpenAI-format `tools` array with `tool_choice` for function calling, and set `response_format` to `{"type": "json_object"}` when the caller needs guaranteed-valid JSON. Responses come back as a standard ChatCompletion object with `choices[]` and a `usage` block for per-request token accounting.
Pricing is $0.42 per 1M input tokens, $0.042 per 1M cached input tokens, and $3.50 per 1M output tokens — roughly a fifth the cost of Gemini 3.5 Flash, which is the point: this tier is built to sit behind pipelines that call an LLM on every row, every message, or every support ticket, where the per-call cost compounds fast. Use it for bulk classification and tagging, translation at scale, and lightweight structured extraction; move up to Flash or Flash 3.7 when a single call needs more reasoning depth than volume.
