Nano Banana Pro vs 2.1: 4x the price at 1K, 2.1x at 4K
Google lists Nano Banana Pro at $0.134 per 1K or 2K image and $0.24 at 4K, against $0.0336, $0.0504 and $0.113 for Nano Banana 2.1. When Pro still pays.
On Google's pricing page, Nano Banana Pro (gemini-3-pro-image) costs about four times Nano Banana 2.1 at 1K, 2.7 times at 2K and 2.1 times at 4K. Pro is the only one of the two that Google prices the same at 1K and 2K. If a 2K image is what you ship, the ratio you pay is 2.7, not 4.
Price per image, Standard tier
Pro bills $120 per 1M image tokens, 2.1 bills $30. The ratios in the last column are plain division of the listed prices.
| Size | Nano Banana 2.1 | Nano Banana Pro | Pro / 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1K | $0.0336 | $0.134 | 4.0x |
| 2K | $0.0504 | $0.134 | 2.7x |
| 4K | $0.113 | $0.24 | 2.1x |
What the premium buys
Google's image guide describes Pro as the model for professional asset production, and 2.1 as the high-volume, high-efficiency model. The two differ in reference limits. Pro takes up to 6 object images, 5 character images and 3 style references, while 2.1 takes up to 10 object images and 4 characters. If your job needs style references, only Pro lists them.
Pro does not list the Image Search grounding that 2.1 added, and Google lists no free tier for either model.
A simple rule
- Volume work, thumbnails, product variants and social sizes: 2.1.
- Final hero art where a rejected render costs more than the price gap: try Pro on the same prompt and compare a handful of outputs yourself.
- 4K deliverables: the gap narrows to 2.1x, so Pro is easier to justify here than at 1K.
On Sume
Both models are in Sume's Image API as google/nano-banana-2.1 and google/nano-banana-pro. Sume lists its own per-image prices, so check the live endpoint price before you copy these ratios. Call GET /v1/images/models/google/nano-banana-pro/endpoints and read the pricing lines for each tier.
Sources
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