THE SHORT ANSWER
● Yes, and you have until 29 October. Nano Banana 2 is being shut down, so this is not optional.
● Every surviving resolution is exactly half price. There is no quality-for-cost trade to weigh.
● Unless you render at 512px. That tier is gone. Move to 1K at $0.0336 and downscale — still cheaper than the 512px you are losing.
● Check your text output first. Thinking tokens went from $3.00 to $7.50 per million.
Per-image pricing, every tier
| Resolution | Nano Banana 2.1 | Nano Banana 2 | Change |
|---|
| 512px | Not supported | $0.045 | Removed |
| 1K | $0.0336 | $0.067 | −50% |
| 2K | $0.0504 | $0.101 | −50% |
| 4K | $0.0756 | $0.151 | −50% |
| 1K, batch | $0.0168 | $0.034 | −50% |
| 4K, batch | $0.0378 | $0.076 | −50% |
At 10,000 images a month at 2K, that is $504 against $1,010. At 100,000 on batch it is $2,520 against $5,000.
Token pricing, where it is not all good news
| Per 1M tokens | Nano Banana 2.1 | Nano Banana 2 |
|---|
| Input (text, image, video) | $1.50 | $1.50 |
| Image output | $30 | $60 |
| Image output, batch | $15 | $30 |
| Text and thinking output | $7.50 | $3.00 |
Image generation halved. Text and reasoning output went up 2.5x. If your pipeline asks the model to describe, caption or reason about images in writing, run the numbers before assuming the migration saves money — for a caption-heavy workload it can cost more.
The three things that actually break
1. The model id is not an alias
Nano Banana 2 is gemini-3.1-flash-image. The successor is gemini-nano-banana-2.1, a different string. Google has not aliased the old id, so on 29 October calls using it fail rather than silently route.
2. 512px has no replacement
2.1 supports 1K, 2K and 4K. If you generate thumbnails, avatars or previews at 512px, there is no equivalent tier. The workaround is to render 1K and downscale locally, which costs $0.0336 against the $0.045 you were paying — cheaper, but it is a code change, not a config change.
3. Nobody has benchmarked it
As of 7 October there is no independent arena placement, Elo score or vote count for Nano Banana 2.1. Half the price at the same resolution usually means a different model underneath. Regenerate twenty reference prompts on both and compare before you cut over — there is no third party who has done it for you.
23 days is short for a production migration, and the shutdown is the hard constraint. Treat the price cut as the consolation prize rather than the reason.
A migration order that works
- Audit your resolutions today. If any traffic renders at 512px, that is the only part of this that needs engineering rather than a string change.
- Check your token mix. Image output versus text output decides whether this is a saving or a cost.
- Build a reference set. Twenty prompts that represent your real traffic, rendered on both models, compared side by side.
- Switch the id behind a flag so you can roll back inside the window rather than after it closes.
- Cut over by 22 October, leaving a week of margin. A deadline you meet on the day is a deadline you miss.
FAQ
When exactly does Nano Banana 2 stop working?
Google's changelog gives 29 October 2026 for gemini-3.1-flash-image. Nano Banana 2.1 became generally available on 6 October, so the migration window is 23 days.
Is Nano Banana 2.1 actually better, or just cheaper?
Unknown. There were no independent benchmarks as of 7 October — no arena rank, Elo or vote count. Google has published pricing and availability, not comparative quality. Test it on your own prompts.
What replaces the 512px tier?
Nothing directly. 2.1 offers 1K, 2K and 4K only. Render at 1K for $0.0336 and downscale — that is still less than the $0.045 the 512px tier cost.
Does the migration save money for every workload?
No. Image output halved to $30 per million tokens, but text and thinking output rose from $3.00 to $7.50. A workload that generates long written descriptions of images can end up more expensive.
Sources
Full launch coverage: Nano Banana 2.1 — half price and a 29 October deadline.