Google released Gemini 4 Argon on Tuesday, October 13, and it is now Google’s most capable model. You can use it in the Gemini app and in AI Mode in Search, but only if you pay for Google AI Pro ($20 a month) or Google AI Ultra (at least $100 a month). According to The Decoder, Argon takes over from the Pro class as Google’s flagship series, with more Gemini 4 models promised later.
What Gemini 4 Argon is
Google pitches Argon at hard, long jobs: finance, software engineering, coding, creative writing and cybersecurity defense. In the consumer app, Josh Woodward, Google’s VP of product for Gemini and Google Labs, says it answers faster and with less hedging, repetition and cliché. On longer tasks it can start returning a response while it is still thinking, and switching between chat and tasks in the app is easier. Engadget also reports that Antigravity, Google’s agentic coding interface, is coming to the Gemini app for macOS.
Developers can reach Argon through the Gemini API, AI Studio and Antigravity. The context limit is 1 million tokens (the amount of text the model can consider at once), with a new continuation protocol described in Google’s docs. Before the public launch, Argon went to members of Google’s Fairwind Program, which includes governments and trusted partners.
Who gets it, and what it costs
Consumer access is limited for now. Free and AI Plus users only get the lighter Flash models under Google’s new tier structure, as The Decoder puts it. That matches what we covered in our report on the free Gemini tier.
For the API, Google is running an introductory price through November 30, 2026. After that, it doubles:
| Model | Input (per 1M tokens) | Output (per 1M tokens) |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini 4 Argon, introductory | $2 | $10 |
| Gemini 4 Argon, regular | $4 | $20 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $4 | $20 |
| GPT-6 Astra | $10 | $50 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | $10 | $50 |
The table comes from The Decoder. Cached input, which applies when you reuse the same chunk of text, is 95% cheaper. Artificial Analysis, cited by Engadget, says Argon matches GPT-6 Astra’s score on its Intelligence Index at 60% of the cost per task at the introductory prices.
How it compares
Google says Argon ranks first on the Vals Index, which covers finance, coding, legal and tax work, and scored 87% on ERQA, a test of reasoning about the physical world. On the Gray Swan indirect prompt injection benchmark, which measures how often hidden instructions in a document or web page trick the model, attacks succeeded 0.7% of the time over 15 adaptive attempts. The Decoder notes it is unclear whether rivals were tested the same way, so treat the 8.5% it cites for GPT-6 Astra and 4.8% for Claude Opus 5 as a rough guide.
The picture is not all wins. The Decoder says Argon still trails Claude Opus 5.5 in independent overall rankings, and because it arrived about two weeks after the rivals, it sits behind Meta’s Muse Wonder Full, which launched a day earlier. We covered that model in our piece on Meta’s Muse Wonder. The productivity figures, such as a more than 35% increase in agent-driven code submissions and nearly a third fewer code rollbacks, are Google’s own and have not been checked by outsiders.
On safety, Google says external bio red teaming got past fewer than 1% of the tested checks, and that attempts at unauthorized shortcuts fell to 2%. The model is also trained to pause for human confirmation before irreversible steps.
Should you switch?
If you already pay for Pro or Ultra, try Argon on the jobs where the old model let you down: long documents, spreadsheets and code. If you are on the free plan, nothing changes today, and $20 a month is only worth it if you hit the limits of the Flash models regularly.
For teams, the calendar matters more than the benchmark. The $2 and $10 pricing ends November 30, so run your cost estimates at the doubled rate. The Decoder also says Google is reportedly testing a successor codenamed “Carbon” that is said to be better at coding, so locking a whole project to Argon this week may not be wise. Google has not said when AI Plus users might get access.
