4 ms·

The "introductory pricing" for this 3.7 Flash model is really weird. It's scheduled to double in price on December 31, 2026, but who would anticipate still usi

by simonw 2mo ago

The "introductory pricing" for this 3.7 Flash model is really weird. It's scheduled to double in price on December 31, 2026, but who would anticipate still using this model five months from now? Especially since 3.6 Flash came out just three weeks ago! My first effort with default thinking level produced an ambitious pelican, let down by a flawed bicycle: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F8df5fd1b58f128cff27f57f0f959e169 https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=ht... Then I ran it on high, medium and low thinking levels (oddly minimal is no longer an option, which WAS an option for 3.5 and 3.6) and got a pretty excellent pelican for the first two: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer.html#url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F6779a22d5e7bb6bdf29936f1600a5259 https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer.html#u... UPDATE: That was in Safari, but as pointed out in the replies here the pelicans do NOT render well in Firefox or Chrome! Best guess is that's because of this invalid filter in the SVG: <filter id="shadow" x="-10%" y="-10%" width="130%" height="130%"></filter> Filters are meant to contain additional elements, not be empty: https://drafts.csswg.org/filter-effects/#FilterElement https://drafts.csswg.org/filter-effects/#FilterElement - so maybe Chrome and Firefox remove the element that references the broken filter but Safari doesn't?

spiderfarmer 2mo ago
It's not weird if you're in marketing.
jakswa 2mo ago
This pelican gave me a good laugh, because there's enough reasoning that the render is out of sight initially. The buildup!
abtinf 2mo ago
> got a pretty excellent pelican for the first two This suggests you primarily use Safari. While the bike renders, the pelican doesn’t in Chrome and Firefox. Probably one of the more serious defects I’ve seen with the pelican. It’s one thing when animated SVGs have bugs, but another when plain ones do.
- jakswa 2mo ago
  my whole world is shifting. have I been seeing _different pelicans_ from everyone else?!
  - jpadkins 2mo ago
    welcome to the internet, not all browsers are the same
    - jakswa 2mo ago
      thank you I'm still on ie8
- simonw 2mo ago
  ... whoa, that's true! Thanks for catching that.
- ceroxylon 2mo ago
  Thank you for pointing this out, I was looking at the first like 'Umm Simon... there isn't even a pelican?"
GodelNumbering 2mo ago
I think introductory here means more or less permanent but they can't publicly admit there are no takers at a higher price. Anthropic for instance announced a couple of days ago that they are making Sonnet's 'introductory pricing' permanent https://xcancel.com/claudeai/status/2086891169217122586 https://xcancel.com/claudeai/status/2086891169217122586
- MikhailTal 2mo ago
  When a company gives away service a heavily subsidized service as a promo, the full cost of serving it (compute) can get classified as sales and marketing instead of just cost of revenue, which makes your gross margin look better!
zurfer 2mo ago
maybe exactly because the frontier moves, introductory pricing makes sense as you want to free up compute for the newer models
- thebigspacefuck 2mo ago
  They wouldn’t be on the frontier at all if it weren’t for this pricing.
wongarsu 2mo ago
At $work we still have some places using Opus 4.5. Even places using Qwen 2.5-VL, which is now 18 months old. It works, and upgrading is work (we'd have to validate the new model performs comparable in all the corner cases that currently work just fine) Those kind of workloads would be hit by an end of introductory pricing. And it's exactly the kind of cases that are not very price sensitive. Where we are price sensitive we track new model releases closely, where we aren't other issues get priority as long as llm performance is good enough
- dannyw 2mo ago
  Especially for minor workloads that’s like using a dollar of tokens a day. Not worth it unless you’re unhappy with performance or you have nothing else to do.
nharada 2mo ago
I assume so when they release Flash 3.8 or 4.0 or whatever they can claim it's not a price increase?
asdfman123 2mo ago
Maybe it's a way to kick people off the old models. "If you still want to keep using the old model you can, but you'd better pay a premium." I work for Google and their free, internal Gemini API isn't quite as graceful. They once turned down a model arbitrarily and it broke our tests. I had to scramble to fix it, then build warning systems for the turndown as well as a special validator to make sure any upgrades make the same determinations.
swalsh 2mo ago
Yeah, so I'm going to confess. Ive built production AI systems that have very specific jobs, deployed them, and moved on. The cost is not noticeable, i had the system dialed in. Not worth the effort to reevaluate a newer model to see if its better in some way. Current model works, and I have other projects that are more important.
MinimalAction 2mo ago
For what it's worth, I use Brave and it didn't render properly in a normal tab, but rendered correctly on a private tab! Underlying engine is Chromium anyway, so make of that what you will.
- drusepth 2mo ago
  That sounds like something absolutely wild happening in Brave. Or maybe one of your installed extensions modifying the page (presumably private tabs disable those)?
formvoltron 2mo ago
We can be sure that Google is not Pelicanmaxxing their models.
- bessbd 2mo ago
  Unless it's just countersignaling. Like prompting for occasional typos so text doesn't look AI-genrated
mchusma 2mo ago
I think in this case its a sign they are subsidizing usage, so it means that the only people left using it in Jan 2027 will be some enterprisy or orphaned workflows which should pay up or migrate off.
simonw 2mo ago
Here's a rendered copy of the pelican I found impressive, for people who don't have Safari: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-3.7-flash-high-pelican.jpg https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-3.7-flas...
simonw 2mo ago
IMPORTANT UPDATE: This was my fault. Gemini 3.7 Flash produces SVG that works in all three browsers. My vibe-coded tool for rendering those SVGs in a document was stripping some attributes. I've fixed that bug now and https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer.html#url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F6779a22d5e7bb6bdf29936f1600a5259 https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer.html#u... shows the pelicans as they should have been rendered across all three browsers. (Here's the fix: https://github.com/simonw/tools/commit/78fca0e647a9e20eff16900cf4485a6d622087e9 https://github.com/simonw/tools/commit/78fca0e647a9e20eff169... )

by simonw 2mo ago

spiderfarmer 2mo ago

It's not weird if you're in marketing.

jakswa 2mo ago

This pelican gave me a good laugh, because there's enough reasoning that the render is out of sight initially. The buildup!

abtinf 2mo ago

> got a pretty excellent pelican for the first two This suggests you primarily use Safari. While the bike renders, the pelican doesn’t in Chrome and Firefox. Probably one of the more serious defects I’ve seen with the pelican. It’s one thing when animated SVGs have bugs, but another when plain ones do.

jakswa 2mo ago
my whole world is shifting. have I been seeing _different pelicans_ from everyone else?!
- jpadkins 2mo ago
  welcome to the internet, not all browsers are the same
  - jakswa 2mo ago
    thank you I'm still on ie8
simonw 2mo ago
... whoa, that's true! Thanks for catching that.
ceroxylon 2mo ago
Thank you for pointing this out, I was looking at the first like 'Umm Simon... there isn't even a pelican?"

GodelNumbering 2mo ago

I think introductory here means more or less permanent but they can't publicly admit there are no takers at a higher price. Anthropic for instance announced a couple of days ago that they are making Sonnet's 'introductory pricing' permanent https://xcancel.com/claudeai/status/2086891169217122586 https://xcancel.com/claudeai/status/2086891169217122586

MikhailTal 2mo ago
When a company gives away service a heavily subsidized service as a promo, the full cost of serving it (compute) can get classified as sales and marketing instead of just cost of revenue, which makes your gross margin look better!

zurfer 2mo ago

maybe exactly because the frontier moves, introductory pricing makes sense as you want to free up compute for the newer models

thebigspacefuck 2mo ago
They wouldn’t be on the frontier at all if it weren’t for this pricing.

wongarsu 2mo ago

At $work we still have some places using Opus 4.5. Even places using Qwen 2.5-VL, which is now 18 months old. It works, and upgrading is work (we'd have to validate the new model performs comparable in all the corner cases that currently work just fine) Those kind of workloads would be hit by an end of introductory pricing. And it's exactly the kind of cases that are not very price sensitive. Where we are price sensitive we track new model releases closely, where we aren't other issues get priority as long as llm performance is good enough

dannyw 2mo ago
Especially for minor workloads that’s like using a dollar of tokens a day. Not worth it unless you’re unhappy with performance or you have nothing else to do.

nharada 2mo ago

I assume so when they release Flash 3.8 or 4.0 or whatever they can claim it's not a price increase?

asdfman123 2mo ago

Maybe it's a way to kick people off the old models. "If you still want to keep using the old model you can, but you'd better pay a premium." I work for Google and their free, internal Gemini API isn't quite as graceful. They once turned down a model arbitrarily and it broke our tests. I had to scramble to fix it, then build warning systems for the turndown as well as a special validator to make sure any upgrades make the same determinations.

swalsh 2mo ago

Yeah, so I'm going to confess. Ive built production AI systems that have very specific jobs, deployed them, and moved on. The cost is not noticeable, i had the system dialed in. Not worth the effort to reevaluate a newer model to see if its better in some way. Current model works, and I have other projects that are more important.

MinimalAction 2mo ago

For what it's worth, I use Brave and it didn't render properly in a normal tab, but rendered correctly on a private tab! Underlying engine is Chromium anyway, so make of that what you will.

drusepth 2mo ago
That sounds like something absolutely wild happening in Brave. Or maybe one of your installed extensions modifying the page (presumably private tabs disable those)?

formvoltron 2mo ago

We can be sure that Google is not Pelicanmaxxing their models.

bessbd 2mo ago
Unless it's just countersignaling. Like prompting for occasional typos so text doesn't look AI-genrated

mchusma 2mo ago

I think in this case its a sign they are subsidizing usage, so it means that the only people left using it in Jan 2027 will be some enterprisy or orphaned workflows which should pay up or migrate off.

simonw 2mo ago

Here's a rendered copy of the pelican I found impressive, for people who don't have Safari: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-3.7-flash-high-pelican.jpg https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-3.7-flas...

simonw 2mo ago

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This was my fault. Gemini 3.7 Flash produces SVG that works in all three browsers. My vibe-coded tool for rendering those SVGs in a document was stripping some attributes. I've fixed that bug now and https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer.html#url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F6779a22d5e7bb6bdf29936f1600a5259 https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer.html#u... shows the pelicans as they should have been rendered across all three browsers. (Here's the fix: https://github.com/simonw/tools/commit/78fca0e647a9e20eff16900cf4485a6d622087e9 https://github.com/simonw/tools/commit/78fca0e647a9e20eff169... )