Gemini 4 Hydrogen

Not yet independently verified. The speed and index comparisons with Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Argon are Google's own. OpenRouter listed the model on 12 November 2026 at the same price, but we have not found an independent test. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Gemini 4 Hydrogen arrives at the price Gemini 3.8 Flash is about to reach. Google lists it at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens on the paid standard tier, thinking tokens counted as output, while Flash costs half that until 31 December 2026 and moves to the same $1.50 and $7.50 on 1 January 2027. The model went on general release on 12 November 2026 under the identifier gemini-4-hydrogen.

Inputs, outputs and thinking

The model reads text, images, video, audio and PDFs and answers in text. Its context window is 1,048,576 tokens, shared between input and output. Output defaults to 65,536 tokens per synchronous request and can run to the full window with long decode. Thinking comes in four levels, low, medium, high and xhigh. Audio and image generation and the Live API are not supported.

Five ways to pay

The pricing page gives five service tiers. Standard is $1.50 and $7.50. Batch and Flex are half that, $0.75 and $3.75. Priority, for traffic that must not queue, costs $2.70 and $13.50. Contributor, an invitation-only private preview, also charges $0.75 and $3.75 but lets Google use the request data to improve its products, which the paid Standard, Batch, Flex and Priority tiers do not. A free tier exists in which data is used for product improvement.

Only implicit caching applies, at $0.075 per million cached tokens on Standard. Grounding with Google Search gives 5,000 free requests a month, shared across Gemini 3 and newer models, then costs $14 per 1,000 with a cap of 1,500 a day.

Choosing between Hydrogen and Flash

A team on Gemini 3.8 Flash pays half Hydrogen's rate for the next seven weeks. From January the two cost the same per token, so the question becomes which does the job in fewer tokens, which only a team's own tests can settle. Google claims Hydrogen is 2.5 times faster than 3.8 Flash.

Key facts

Maker: Google Released: 12 November 2026 Model code: gemini-4-hydrogen Context window: 1,048,576 tokens, input and output combined Input and output: text, image, video, audio and PDF in, text out Price per million tokens (standard): $1.50 input, $7.50 output including thinking Batch and flex: $0.75 input, $3.75 output