Google's Nano Banana 2.1 Halves Image Prices on Gemini 3.6 Flash

A 1K image on Google's new Nano Banana 2.1 costs $0.0336, down from $0.067 on Nano Banana 2. A 4K image drops to $0.0756, from $0.151. Nano Banana Pro, the quality-tier sibling, still sits at $0.134 per 1K image, per The Decoder's write-up.

The model is built on Gemini 3.6 Flash. It accepts up to 14 reference images in a single prompt and claims to keep up to four characters and ten objects consistent across conversation turns. It exposes minimal, medium, and high thinking levels, and renders at 1K, 2K, and 4K. In Google's framing, "version 2.1 improves visual quality, text rendering, character consistency across conversation turns, wide panoramas, and infographics."

Google's own benchmark numbers have 2.1 beating the pricier Pro variant on several metrics: 1106 vs 1011 on multi-character consistency, 1062 vs 990 on stylization, and 0.521 vs 0.265 on infographic accuracy. The source does not describe the rater pool or the benchmark suite behind those scores.

The caveat is Google's own. The write-up records that "in practice, Nano Banana Pro often still produces noticeably better images," particularly on color accuracy and proportions, with 2.1 positioned as "the more efficient counterpart" rather than a replacement.

Rollout spans the Gemini app, Google Search AI Mode, Google AI Studio, Flow, Stitch, Google Ads, and Google's Enterprise Platform. It lands in a dense week of Google releases we've been tracking, alongside the EmbeddingGemma 2 drop earlier this month.