Google’s Gemini 4 Argon is finally out, but only if you pay for Gemini

Two weeks after keeping it to a small circle of security experts, Google has made Gemini 4 Argon available to developers, businesses and anyone paying for its top Gemini plans. The company’s most powerful model went live globally on Tuesday through the Gemini API, and in the Gemini app for Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers.

When Google first unveiled Argon on September 30, only vetted cyber defenders in its Fairwind Program could use it. Google DeepMind’s Koray Kavukcuoglu, who promised Gemini 4 would come “much earlier” than expected, wrote this announcement too.

Who can use Gemini 4 Argon now

• Gemini app users: AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers can pick it in the Gemini app and in AI Mode in Google Search. Google doesn’t mention free users or its cheaper AI Plus plan, which is already losing access to Gemini’s Pro model.
• Developers: it is on the paid tier of the Gemini API and in AI Studio, under the model ID gemini-4-argon. AI Ultra subscribers can also try it in Android Studio and in Antigravity, Google’s agent-based coding tool.
• Businesses: it is in Gemini for business, the API and Antigravity.
• Scientists: Google is offering 10,000 researchers its highest Antigravity usage tier free for six months, subject to an application and selection.
• Cyber defenders: the version without cyber guardrails stays with Fairwind, which Google says is expanding “to hundreds of additional Fairwind Program partners”.

Google says the model is available globally but did not list countries or languages. Prices are unchanged from September: an introductory $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input 95% cheaper. Google has now given an end date for that offer: November 30, 2026. After that, the price doubles to $4 and $20.

A robotics version that learns from video

Google also released Gemini 4 Argon for Robotics, which uses the same model to plan robot movements, build simulations and judge how well a task went. Its headline demo starts with a video of a person playing cornhole, the beanbag-throwing game. Argon mapped the scene, wrote simulation code and trained a policy, and Google says that when it was moved onto Apptronik’s Apollo humanoid, “the robot quickly sank seven consecutive shots in a real-world trial.”

Google says Argon scores 87% on ERQA, a test of reasoning about the physical world, ahead of every other frontier model it compared. In another test, simulated practice raised a robot’s real-world success rate from 56% to 75%. Developers get the robotics features through the same API and model ID, and Ultra subscribers in AI Studio and Antigravity.

What else Google claims

Google says Argon helped Chrome’s engineers finish a major code overhaul in weeks, and that teams using it in Antigravity submitted more than 35% more agent-written code, with nearly a third fewer rollbacks. In one demo it runs inside the Gemini app for Mac, designing replacement sofa legs and producing a file ready for a 3D printer.

On safety, Google says outside bio red teamers unlocked fewer than 1% of the dangerous sub-tasks they tested, and that prompt-injection attacks succeeded 0.7% of the time on Gray Swan’s benchmark. It also says Argon is trained to pause for a human before irreversible steps. These are Google’s own figures, published alongside a model card, and haven’t been checked independently.

Kavukcuoglu signed off with a promise of more to come:

Gemini 4 Argon is just the beginning. We’re looking forward to bringing you the rest of the Gemini 4 family.

Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google DeepMind

Why it matters

Argon went from a model Google held back over cyber risks to one that millions of paying subscribers can pick in two weeks, with the unrestricted version still kept for vetted defenders. With prices fixed only until November 30, developers have about seven weeks to test Argon at half price before deciding if it beats Claude and ChatGPT for their work.

Sources: Google: Introducing Gemini 4 Argon; Google for Developers: Gemini 4 Argon for Robotics.