Last refreshed 2026-05-11. Next refresh: weekly.
Why use Text Bison on GCP Vertex AI?
GCP Vertex AI offers Text Bison with pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.50/1M 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.
Setup 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")text-bison-001Request 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("text-bison-001")
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 | $0.50 |
| Output tokens | $0.50 |
Capabilities
About Text Bison
Text Bison is an advanced language model developed by Google AI as a refined iteration of the Pathways Language Model (PaLM) 4. It is particularly effective at handling a range of natural language processing tasks, including classification, sentiment analysis, entity extraction, question answering, summarization, and text rewriting 5. The model boasts a substantial token limit, initially set at 4096, later expanded to 32,000, allowing it to process longer texts compared to some earlier models 3. Despite its capabilities, Text Bison shares common large language model limitations, such as training data biases and the potential for generating incorrect or nonsensical outputs 4. Its knowledge is up-to-date only until February 2023 5, and it is scheduled for discontinuation in April 2025 1.
FAQ
What does Text Bison cost on GCP Vertex AI?
On GCP Vertex AI, Text Bison costs $0.50 per 1M input tokens and $0.50 per 1M output tokens.
Who created Text Bison?
Text Bison was created by Google DeepMind as part of the Palm 2 model family.
Is Text Bison open source?
Text Bison's open source status is unknown in the seed data.