Gemini 3.8 Flash is live in the Gemini app on your phone, but only if you pay for it. Google says the new model is available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers across the Gemini app, AI Mode in Google Search, and Gemini in Google Sheets. Everyone else stays on what they were already using. Google’s announcement gives no timeline for the free tier.
What Gemini 3.8 Flash changes on your phone
Flash is the model that handles most everyday Gemini requests. Google describes 3.8 Flash as its most intelligent workhorse model, with gains over 3.7 Flash in software engineering, agentic tasks and multi-step reasoning. It says the model runs at the same speed and cost as 3.7.
Most of the evidence Google offers is benchmark work aimed at developers. There is one behavioural change worth knowing about as a phone user. Google says the model works harder on complex tasks, taking extra reasoning steps and calling tools repeatedly. In the app that reads as a model that may take longer to answer a hard question than the one it replaces. Google itself points developers who care more about efficiency back to 3.7 Flash, which stays fully supported.
Google is also moving fast here by its own account, calling this its third Flash release in only six weeks. That pace is good for capability and awkward for anyone trying to judge whether the assistant on their phone behaves consistently month to month.
The price is introductory, and it is set to double
Google’s own framing is that 3.8 Flash arrives at the same introductory price as 3.7 Flash, at $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens. The footnote is the part worth reading. That introductory price expires on December 31, 2026. From January 1, 2027, Google says $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens will apply.
That is a doubling, disclosed as a footnote under a launch pitched on low cost. It does not hit consumers directly, since app access comes through the AI Pro and Ultra plans. It does hit the third-party apps you use that are built on Gemini, and those costs tend to find their way back to subscribers eventually.
The second model is not for you
Google announced a second variant alongside it, and it is not something you can turn on. Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is, in Google’s words, “our most capable cybersecurity model with frontier-level performance in vulnerability detection and automated patching, available to trusted defenders through our new Fairwind Program”. Access is restricted to trusted government authorities, critical infrastructure operators and software maintainers, who have to apply. Google says its Chrome Security team used it to produce 2.6 times more correct patches for Chrome vulnerabilities than the best commercial models it compared against.
If you are on the free tier of Gemini, none of this reaches your phone today. Paid subscribers should already see the switch, alongside the wider push of AI Mode into Search.
