Google opens Gemini 4 Carbon to all paying developers at Argon's price

reported by 3 outlets· 7 articles · confidence: medium · first seen 2026-10-28 00:00 UTC

What this means for you

Carbon costs the same as Argon ($2/$10 per million tokens), so the decision is routing, not budget: Google's Orchestrator switches between them mid-session, and Google reports near-Carbon success on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at 24% less quota and 19% faster. That claim is worth testing before you re-plan spend.

Google made Gemini 4 Carbon generally available on 10 November, two weeks after releasing it to selected cybersecurity defenders. Carbon costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, matching Gemini 4 Argon, its sibling shipped earlier. Google reports first place on CursorBench 4.0, Perplexity's WANDR and Zapier's AutomationBench at under half the cost per task of the next best external model, without giving evaluation dates. A /swarm preview in Antigravity assigns one prompt to a tracked team of agents. Two days later came Hydrogen, a faster model at $1.50/$7.50 that Google says scores 51 on Artificial Analysis's index to Argon's 50.

Models in this story

Key facts

  • ·Gemini 4 Carbon became generally available on 10 November 2026, after two weeks of access limited to cybersecurity defenders through Google's Fairwind Program. source
  • ·Carbon is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, the same introductory price as Gemini 4 Argon. source
  • ·Google reports Carbon ranking first on CursorBench 4.0, Perplexity's WANDR and Zapier's AutomationBench at more than 2X lower cost per task than the next best external model; no evaluation dates are given. source
  • ·Google previewed /swarm in Google Antigravity, assigning one prompt to a coordinated team of agents across parallel isolated workspaces. source
  • ·Google reports Orchestrator on Terminal-Bench 4.0 reaching near-Carbon task success rates while consuming 24% less quota and finishing 19% faster. source
  • ·Gemini 4 Hydrogen is priced at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output, flat across its 1 million-token context window, and Google reports 51 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at its default high thinking level against 50 for Argon, reaching 54 at its xhigh setting. source

What the sources say

  • Google DeepMind Blog — The 28 October launch post for Carbon; no body text was available to read.
  • Google DeepMind Blog — The availability post, carrying the pricing, benchmark claims and Antigravity swarm preview.
  • Google DeepMind Blog — Introduces the smaller, faster model and the Orchestrator feature that switches models within a session.
  • The Verge AI — Frames the October announcement around cybersecurity capability; no body text was available.
  • The Verge AI — Covers the public rollout and repeats Google's claim that Carbon can rival Anthropic and OpenAI.
  • MarkTechPost — Positions the model as a cyber-defence and coding tool; no body text was available.
  • MarkTechPost — Lists Hydrogen's context window, thinking levels, pricing and a Terminal-Bench 4.1 figure.

Sources

The original reporting. Follow these — they did the work.

Related stories

← the wire