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Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image): pricing, context and benchmarks

Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) is a language model from Google released on June 18, 2026. It costs $0.5 per million input tokens and $3 per million output tokens, with a 131.1K-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.

Mid-range costReasoningNo tool calling

What you need to know about Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image)

Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) was released by Google (United States) on June 18, 2026. It accepts images and text as input and produces images and text. Its context window reaches 131,072 tokens, larger than 29 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 32,768 tokens in one go.

It has been available for about 4 months, long enough for its prices and scores to have settled.

Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) pricing

On OpenRouter, Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) costs $0.5 per million input tokens and $3 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $1.125 per million, more expensive than 61 % of paid models (1.5 times the median of $0.76).

A concrete example: a task that sends 2,000 tokens (about 1,500 words) and receives a 500-token answer costs $0.0025. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $75 a month. The price calculator redoes this with your own volumes.

Performance and benchmarks

Epoch AI does not yet publish a capabilities index for Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image). We therefore show no made-up performance rating: only price, context and features count towards its score.

Features, privacy and local use

  • It does not support tool calling: it is not suited to driving an AI agent that has to act.
  • It can answer in an enforced JSON format (structured outputs).
  • It is a reasoning model: it "thinks" before answering, which helps on hard tasks but uses more output tokens.

Its weights are not published: it can only be used through the Google API or a broker such as OpenRouter, which means sending your data off your machines.

Other Google models

Average price per million tokens (3 input for 1 output).
ModelReleasedAvg. priceECI
Gemini 4 ArgonOct 13, 2026$4166.5
Nano Banana 2.1Oct 6, 2026$3—
Gemini 3.8 FlashSep 2, 2026$1.65157.4
Gemini 3.7 FlashAug 13, 2026$1.5158
Gemini 3.6 FlashJul 21, 2026$1.5154.5
Gemini 3.5 Flash LiteJul 21, 2026$0.85144.9
Nano Banana 2 Lite (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image)Jun 30, 2026$0.56—
Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image)Jun 18, 2026$4.5—

Verdict

Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) scores 37/100 on our grid, which only uses published figures.

Limitations

  • No tool calling: unusable as an agent's brain.
  • No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.

Avoid if…

  • your data must not leave your servers;
  • you are building an agent that must call tools;
  • your tasks are mostly simple: a non-reasoning model will cost less.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) cost?

$0.5 per million input tokens and $3 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0025.

How big is Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image)'s context window?

131,072 tokens, roughly 98,000 words, with a maximum of 32,768 output tokens.

Can Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) run locally?

No, Google does not publish its weights: it is API-only.

Is Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) suitable for an AI agent?

No: without tool calling it cannot act, only answer.

What are the alternatives to Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image)?

The closest models on price and performance are Aion-2.0, GLM 4.5, and Kimi K2 0711.

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Neutrality. No affiliate links. No vendor pays to be reviewed, rated or ranked. Reviews are directed by François Chollet, neutral and factual, and every data point is dated and sourced. How we score