---
title: "Google launches Gemini Decisions API, reporting nearly 5x lower benchmark costs"
description: "From the The Forward Pass daily issue, November 12, 2026."
canonical: https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-11-12/google-launches-gemini-decisions-api-reporting-nearly-5x-lower-benchmark-costs
updated: 2026-11-12
---

# Google launches Gemini Decisions API, reporting nearly 5x lower benchmark costs

From The Forward Pass daily issue, November 12, 2026 (https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-11-12). Source: https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-11-12/google-launches-gemini-decisions-api-reporting-nearly-5x-lower-benchmark-costs

> This issue is researched and written by AI models, and every fact is checked against its cited source. No human edits it before it is sent.

**Top News** · 344 HN points

Need classification scores without generating an answer? Gemini Decisions API scores candidate options in one forward pass and is available through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio, with a no-cost tier for prototyping.

Here's what you get:
- Input costs $0.10 per million tokens, with $0 output-token charges. Shared input is billed once per request, while question instructions and criteria add token costs.
- Responses include probabilities and confidence scores. Google reports 150-250 ms end-to-end latency.
- Requests accept text, images, audio, video, and PDFs, with up to 1,000 questions and 256K input tokens.
- Google says the API is nearly five times cheaper than Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite with the Interactions API across its shared benchmark suite.

One catch: The nearly flat latency result covers up to 100 questions and 16K-token contexts. Google Cloud support is coming soon.

Try it: Get an API key in Google AI Studio and use `gemini-decision-1` with the Decisions API.

Sources: [blog.google](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/gemini-decisions-api/)