Last refreshed 2026-06-15. Next refresh: weekly.
Why use Gemini 1.5 Flash on GCP Vertex AI?
GCP Vertex AI offers Gemini 1.5 Flash with pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.07/1M 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.
Compare Gemini 1.5 Flash across 2 providers to find the best fit for your use caseSetup recipe
Python + curlpip install google-cloud-aiplatformexport GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=...import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")gemini-1.5-flashRequest 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")
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.
Compare Gemini 1.5 Flash Across Providers
| Provider | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) |
|---|---|---|
| GCP Vertex AI | $0.07 | $0.30 |
| Google AI Studio | — | — |
Pricing
| Type | Price (per 1M) |
|---|---|
| Input tokens | $0.07 |
| Output tokens | $0.30 |
| Image input | $0.13 |
| Video input | $0.47 |
| Audio input | $0.04 |
Capabilities
About Gemini 1.5 Flash
Gemini 1.5 Flash is a large language AI model by Google, crafted for speed and efficiency in high-volume scenarios 145. As a lightweight model, it's optimized for fast processing and cost-effectiveness, making it ideal for real-time applications and high-frequency tasks 567. With its multimodal capabilities, Gemini 1.5 Flash effectively processes and reasons across multiple data types, including text, images, audio, video, and PDFs 145. Despite its smaller size compared to Gemini 1.5 Pro, it excels in tasks like summarization, chat applications, and data extraction from lengthy documents, employing "knowledge distillation" to transfer essential knowledge from larger models 5.