Gemini 3.5 Pro: 2M Context, Deep Think Mode Due

Google announced Gemini 3.5 Pro at I/O on May 19, 2026 and put it into limited Vertex AI preview for select enterprise customers. As of June 23, general availability is expected within the week. The confirmed specifications are significant enough to change the model selection calculus for developers currently choosing between Fable 5, GPT-5, and Gemini's own Flash family.

The headline number is the context window: 2 million tokens. That is double Gemini 3.5 Flash's already-large 1 million token context, and larger than any other production frontier model currently available. To put that in practical terms: 2 million tokens holds approximately 1,500 pages of dense technical documentation, a large enterprise codebase, or the complete email history of a mid-sized organization. The use cases that context enables are qualitatively different from anything 128K or 200K models support.

## What Is Confirmed Before GA

Google has officially confirmed three capabilities for Gemini 3.5 Pro before the GA release:

**2 million token context window.** The largest of any production frontier model. Input only — output length follows standard generation limits. The 2M context is relevant for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) at scale, long-document analysis, codebase understanding, and multi-session conversation state.

**Deep Think reasoning mode.** A chain-of-thought reasoning mode that extends the model's deliberation time before generating a response, producing better performance on logic, mathematics, and structured reasoning tasks. Deep Think is gated behind the $250/month Gemini Ultra subscription tier — it is not available on standard Pro API access or the $19.99/month Advanced plan.

**Multimodal input.** Text and image support at launch, following the same pattern as Gemini 3.5 Flash. Video and audio multimodal support are expected in a subsequent update but are not confirmed for the GA release.

What is not confirmed: official benchmarks, production pricing, and fine-tuning availability. Google has shared internal data suggesting 10-15 point SWE-bench Verified gains over the 3.1 generation, but those figures are unverified external estimates. The authoritative benchmark numbers arrive with the GA announcement.

## The Context Window: What 2M Tokens Actually Enables

Most developers work with 128K to 200K context windows in current-generation frontier models. Fable 5 operates at 256K context. GPT-5 runs at 128K with extended context available at higher cost tiers. The jump to 2 million tokens is not incremental — it changes what category of problem you can send to a single model call.

**Whole-repository code analysis.** A 2M token context holds most production codebases in a single call. For security auditing, migration planning, or cross-file refactoring, this eliminates the chunking and retrieval architecture that developers currently maintain as a separate system. Instead of building RAG pipelines to handle large codebases, you pass the codebase directly.

**Legal and financial document analysis.** Contract portfolios, regulatory filings, and M&A due diligence document sets regularly exceed 500K tokens. A 2M context model can process those document sets in a single pass, with the model holding the full context for cross-document reasoning rather than retrieving chunks sequentially.

**Long multi-session conversation state.** Enterprise customer service, complex technical support, and ongoing advisory conversations accumulate context that current models cannot hold. Passing 2 million tokens of conversation history enables continuity that short-context models cannot provide.

**Research synthesis.** Academic literature synthesis, patent landscape analysis, and competitive intelligence work that requires reading hundreds of sources simultaneously becomes a single-call operation rather than a multi-step pipeline.

The pricing implication: 2M input tokens at the current Gemini 3.1 Pro rate of $2.00 per 1M tokens would cost $4.00 per call just for input. That is expensive for most tasks but transformatively cheap for tasks that currently require custom RAG infrastructure. The break-even analysis depends on how much your RAG pipeline costs to build and maintain.

## Deep Think: What It Is and Who It Is For

Deep Think is Google's implementation of extended reasoning — the same category of capability that Anthropic's Fable 5 extended thinking mode and OpenAI's o3 provide. The model deliberates before responding, working through intermediate steps, checking its own reasoning, and arriving at a final answer that benefits from the additional compute.

The practical effect on benchmark performance is substantial for specific task types. Extended reasoning models outperform standard models on AIME (mathematics competition problems), GPQA (graduate-level science), and structured logical reasoning tasks by large margins. They underperform standard models on tasks where speed matters more than depth — short-form generation, classification, extraction, and conversational responses where latency is the binding constraint.

Deep Think gated behind the $250/month Ultra tier creates a pricing architecture that differs from Anthropic's approach. Fable 5's extended thinking mode was available via API at usage-based pricing before the export control ban removed it from the market. Deep Think in Gemini 3.5 Pro requires a subscription tier, not just API token spend. For developers with high-volume reasoning workloads, the subscription model may be less economical than a usage-based pricing structure.

The expected release of Deep Think as a standalone API feature (not subscription-gated) is not confirmed for GA. Watch the pricing page at launch.

## Pricing: What to Expect Based on the 3.1 Baseline

Google has not announced Gemini 3.5 Pro pricing before GA. The reference points are:

- Gemini 3.1 Pro: $2.00 per 1M input tokens, $12.00 per 1M output tokens
- Standard surcharge above 200K context: 2x input / 1.5x output
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (already GA): $0.10 per 1M input, $0.40 per 1M output

Gemini 3.5 Pro will likely be priced at or above Gemini 3.1 Pro given the expanded capabilities. The 2M context window may come with a context-tiered pricing model similar to 3.1 — baseline rate up to some threshold, multiplier above it.

The competitive pressure is meaningful. After Fable 5's export control ban (June 12) left a gap in the ultra-high-capability model market, and with GPT-5 priced at the high end, Gemini 3.5 Pro has an opportunity to capture developer migration from both. If Google prices the 2M context at a flat rate rather than a multiplied surcharge, it changes the cost model for large-context applications significantly.

Compare current frontier model pricing at [LLM API pricing tracker](/tools/llm-api-pricing) and update your comparisons when Gemini 3.5 Pro pricing is announced at GA.

## Gemini 3.5 Pro vs Fable 5 and GPT-5

The model landscape has shifted significantly in June 2026. Understanding where Gemini 3.5 Pro fits requires understanding the current state of its competitors.

**Fable 5** was the previous benchmark leader on reasoning tasks, with a 256K context window and extended thinking mode. It went offline on June 12, 2026 following the US government's export control directive related to the Anthropic Mythos AI security incident. As of June 23, Fable 5 reappeared in the Anthropic Android app on June 21, but API and web access remain restricted for non-government users. The ban created a market gap that Gemini 3.5 Pro is positioned to fill. See: [Anthropic Mythos NSA breach and Fable 5 export ban explained](/blog/anthropic-mythos-nsa-breach-fable5-export-ban-what-happened-june-2026).

**GPT-5** is currently available but not in extended reasoning mode at standard API tiers. OpenAI's o3 (the reasoning-specialized model) handles complex reasoning tasks but carries higher latency and cost. The combination of the 42-state AG investigation launched June 12 and IPO disclosure requirements has added enterprise uncertainty around OpenAI's product roadmap for the next 6-12 months.

**Gemini 3.5 Flash** is already GA and serves the speed/cost tier that most production workloads require. Flash at $0.10/1M input is the default choice for high-volume inference. Pro is the choice when the task requires the full context, reasoning depth, or multimodal capability that Flash cannot provide.

In practice: if your use case requires more than 200K tokens of context, Deep Think reasoning, or frontier multimodal quality, Gemini 3.5 Pro is now the clearest available option until Fable 5 returns to full market availability. Use [Claude vs ChatGPT model comparison](/tools/claude-vs-chatgpt) to benchmark your specific use case across providers.

## What Developers Should Do Before GA

A few practical steps to take this week:

**Apply for early access through Vertex AI.** Limited preview participants have had several weeks of testing time. If you are not already in the preview, apply through the Vertex AI console. Early access is granted in batches.

**Evaluate your context requirements.** If your current architecture uses chunked retrieval to handle large documents, benchmark whether whole-context Gemini 3.5 Pro calls are more accurate on your specific task. The context engineering savings may offset the token cost.

**Test Deep Think on your reasoning workloads.** If you have tasks that currently go to o3 or Fable 5's extended thinking mode, Deep Think is the nearest comparable. The latency and cost profile will differ — test on representative samples before migrating production workloads.

**Watch the pricing announcement carefully.** The 2M context surcharge structure will determine whether large-context use cases become economically viable at scale or remain expensive outliers. If Google prices 2M context at a flat rate, the use case math changes substantially.

## Our Analysis

Gemini 3.5 Pro arrives at an unusually favorable moment for Google. Fable 5 is restricted, OpenAI is under multi-state legal investigation with IPO disclosure obligations, and the developer community is actively evaluating alternatives.

The 2M context window is the genuine differentiator. Every frontier model offers competitive performance on standard benchmarks within a relatively narrow range. The context window creates a category difference — problems that were architecturally impossible with 128K models become trivial with 2M. That's not a marginal improvement on an existing metric. It is a different capability tier.

The constraint is Deep Think availability. Locking extended reasoning behind a $250/month subscription rather than making it available at usage-based API pricing creates friction for the developer segment that cares most about reasoning quality. Enterprise customers with fixed seats can absorb the Ultra subscription; individual developers and startups building reasoning-intensive applications cannot.

Google's pattern with Gemini models has been to launch capabilities in subscription tiers and later release them via API as the feature matures. Deep Think will likely follow that path. If Google announces a usage-based Deep Think API at GA, that changes the competitive picture substantially.

The benchmark numbers will matter less than the pricing announcement. Frontier models are close enough in capability that cost and context size determine adoption at scale more than 2-3 point benchmark differences. Watch the pricing page when the GA announcement drops.

For developers evaluating their AI provider stack: the three-way race between Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic has rarely been more genuinely open. Each provider has significant capability and significant constraint. The model selection decision in late June 2026 is more architecture-dependent than it has been at any point in the past two years.

## Key Takeaways

- **2 million tokens** — largest context window of any production frontier model, double Gemini 3.5 Flash's 1M; enables whole-codebase analysis, full document sets, and long conversation state in a single API call
- **Deep Think** — chain-of-thought reasoning mode; gated to $250/month Ultra subscription at launch, not usage-based API; expect eventual API release based on Google's prior pattern
- **GA window** — limited Vertex AI preview since May 19; full GA expected June 23-30, 2026
- **Market timing** — Fable 5 restricted since June 12, OpenAI under 42-state AG investigation; Gemini 3.5 Pro enters a market with two of its top competitors structurally constrained
- **Benchmark caution** — 10-15 point SWE-bench gains over 3.1 are unverified estimates; authoritative numbers arrive with GA announcement
- **Pricing unknown** — expect at or above Gemini 3.1 Pro rates ($2.00/1M input, $12.00/1M output); context surcharge structure above 200K is the critical number to watch

## Sources

- [TechTimes: Google Gemini 3.5 Pro Nears June Launch With 2M Context And Deep Think](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317919/20260606/google-gemini-35-pro-nears-june-launch-2-million-token-context-deep-think-reasoning.htm)
- [Codersera: Gemini 3.5 Pro June 2026 Launch Guide](https://codersera.com/blog/gemini-3-5-pro-launch-guide-2026/)
- [The AI Rankings: Gemini 3.5 Pro 2M Context, Deep Think and Release Status](https://theairankings.com/google/gemini-3-5-pro/)
- [ByteIota: Gemini 3.5 Pro API Access, Pricing, and Developer Guide](https://byteiota.com/gemini-35-pro-api-access-pricing-developer-guide/)