Last refreshed 2026-06-15. Next refresh: weekly.
Why use Gemini 1.5 Flash 8B on GCP Vertex AI?
GCP Vertex AI offers Gemini 1.5 Flash 8B with pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.04/1M input tokens. Vertex AI is Google Cloud's managed AI platform, offering access to Gemini models and hundreds of partner models alongside tools for fine-tuning, grounding, vector search, and end-to-end MLOps pipelines.
Input / 1M
$0.0375
Output / 1M
$0.15
Cache
Not sourced
Batch
Not sourced
Setup recipe
Python + curlInstall
pip install google-cloud-aiplatformAuth
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=...Call
import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")Model ID
gemini-1.5-flash-8bRequest example
import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
# Reads GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT from env; authenticates via Application Default Credentials
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")
model = GenerativeModel("gemini-1.5-flash-8b")
response = model.generate_content("Hello")
print(response.text)Gotchas
- For Google-published models use the model name directly, e.g. "gemini-2.0-flash-001". For third-party publishers (Anthropic, Meta, etc.) use the full publisher path, e.g. "publishers/anthropic/models/claude-3-5-sonnet-v2@20241022".
- The examples expect GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT; rename it only if your application config maps the new variable.
Pricing
| Type | Price (per 1M) |
|---|---|
| Input tokens | $0.04 |
| Output tokens | $0.15 |
Capabilities
No model capability flags are currently sourced.
About Gemini 1.5 Flash 8B
Lightweight 8B variant of Gemini 1.5 Flash optimized for speed and cost-efficiency. Supports 1M token context with fast inference for real-time applications.
Model Specs
Released2024-10-03
Parameters8B
Context1m
ArchitectureDecoder Only
Knowledge cutoff2024-08