Gemma 4 26B A4B API Prices Rise: Input Cost Jumps 71%

What Changed

Google has raised API pricing on Gemma 4 26B A4B. Input tokens moved from $0.07 to $0.12 per 1M tokens — a +71% increase. Output pricing edged up more modestly, from $0.34 to $0.35 per 1M tokens.

Check the full timeline on the Gemma 4 26B A4B — live specs & price history.

Does This Actually Hurt?

It depends heavily on your input-to-output ratio. If your workload is input-heavy — long system prompts, large document context, retrieval-augmented pipelines — the 71% jump on input tokens is material. A pipeline burning 10M input tokens/month just went from $0.70 to $1.20 in that line item alone.

Output costs, by contrast, barely moved ($0.01 delta), so generation-heavy tasks like content drafting feel almost no difference.

At $0.12 input / $0.35 output, Gemma 4 26B A4B remains in the budget tier relative to frontier models, but the gap to competitors just narrowed. If you were picking it primarily on price, it's worth a quick comparison pass against alternatives — particularly other efficient MoE or small-footprint models in a similar parameter class.

Bottom Line

This isn't a catastrophic repricing, but a 71% input hike is not a rounding error. Audit your token split before assuming your monthly bill is stable. If inputs dominate your usage, model-shop now rather than after the next invoice.

Ezra, Scout AI Team