As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/m/gemini-3-8-live/

# Gemini 3.8 Live

Google DeepMind, Gemini 3 family. Status: current. Type: speech and audio. Released: 2026-09-15.

## How to call it

| Provider | Model id | Endpoint | Docs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Live API (WebSocket) | `gemini-3.8-live` | wss://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/ws/google.ai.generativelanguage.v1beta.GenerativeService.BidiGenerateContent | https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models/gemini-3.8-live |
| Gemini Live API (WebSocket) | `gemini-3.8-live-extended-thinking` |  | https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/live-api |
| Web app |  |  | https://gemini.google.com |

## Pricing

- Input: $0.75 per 1M tokens
- Output: $4.50 per 1M tokens
- Audio input: $3 per 1M tokens
- Audio output: $12 per 1M tokens
- Unit as published: per 1M tokens (text in $0.75, text out $4.50; audio in $3.00 = ~$0.005/min, audio out $12.00 = ~$0.018/min)
- Source: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
- Last checked: 2026-09-29

## Specs

- Input: text, image, audio, video
- Output: text, audio
- Context window: 131,072 tokens
- Max output: 65,536 tokens
- Open weights: no
- Licence: proprietary

## Where it stands

- Newer speech and audio models in the registry since its release: 25. The 5 newest:
  - NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe (30B-A4B) (2026-10-28) https://postcutoff.com/m/nemotron-3-5-transcribe/
  - Hy-SimulMT-30B-A3B (2026-10-22) https://postcutoff.com/m/hy-simulmt-30b-a3b/
  - Eleven Realtime v1 Max / Mini (2026-10-20) https://postcutoff.com/m/eleven-realtime-v1-max/
  - Voxtral Mini Transcribe 3 (+ Mini Transcribe Realtime 3) (2026-10-20) https://postcutoff.com/m/voxtral-mini-transcribe-3/
  - Voxtral Small Transcribe 3 (2026-10-20) https://postcutoff.com/m/voxtral-small-transcribe-3/
- Before it from Google: Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (and Transcribe Live) (2026-08-26) https://postcutoff.com/m/gemini-3-5-transcribe/
- After it from Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS (2026-09-22) https://postcutoff.com/m/gemini-3-8-flash-lite-tts/
- Closed weights; access is hosted only.

## What stands out

- Real-time multilingual voice agents: Low-latency speech-to-speech with near-real-time visual grounding; 97 languages with mid-conversation switching. Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-8-live-gemini-3-8-live-extended-thinking/
- Asynchronous tool use while talking: Keeps the conversation going while tools run in the background, narrating progress ('Let me check that...'). Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-8-live-gemini-3-8-live-extended-thinking/
- Extended Thinking variant tops S2S quality: gemini-3.8-live-extended-thinking ranked #1 on Artificial Analysis Speech-to-Speech Quality Index (82.6) and 97.7% Big Bench Audio. Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-8-live-gemini-3-8-live-extended-thinking/

## Notes

Default Live API model; thinking_level not supported on gemini-3.8-live (use gemini-3.8-live-extended-thinking for deeper reasoning; pricing page lists it at the same rates as gemini-3.8-live, checked 2026-09-29). Previous: gemini-3.1-flash-live-preview, gemini-2.5-flash-native-audio-preview-12-2025. WebSocket endpoint is the standard Live API URL, not re-read today.

Native-audio model for real-time voice and video agents via the Live API (WebSocket, bidirectional streaming).

```python
from google import genai
client = genai.Client()
async with client.aio.live.connect(model="gemini-3.8-live",
        config={"response_modalities": ["AUDIO"]}) as session:
    await session.send_client_content(turns={"parts": [{"text": "Hi!"}]})
```

Sources: [model page](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models/gemini-3.8-live), [pricing](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing), [launch blog](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-8-live-gemini-3-8-live-extended-thinking/).

Model page: https://postcutoff.com/m/gemini-3-8-live/