Gemini 3.6 Flash is Google's new workhorse — but is it enough to beat GPT-4o on price?

google introduced gemini 3.6 flash and 3.5 flash-lite to specifically address the high token costs associated with running autonomous agents in production. the models are designed to minimize latency while maintaining reasoning capabilities over multi-step tasks. this move pressures competitors like openai on pricing efficiency and signals a shift towards cost-effective infrastructure for agentic workflows.