Google doubles Gemini 4 Argon API prices from 1 December

Google doubles Gemini 4 Argon API prices from 1 December

13 October 2026: Google's price list for the Gemini API now puts an end date on the launch rates for Gemini 4 Argon, its frontier model: the current prices hold through 30 November 2026, and every rate doubles from 1 December. A team that built on Argon at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens will pay $4 and $20 from December, on every tier.

When Google announced the model on 30 September it said the $2 and $10 rates were introductory and that $4 and $20 would follow, but gave no date. The pricing page, last updated on 13 October, supplies it.

The rates before and after

All prices are per million tokens, in US dollars, as the pricing page states them.

Tier	Until 30 November	From 1 December
Standard input	2.00	4.00
Standard output, thinking included	10.00	20.00
Standard cached input	0.10	0.20
Batch and Flex input	1.00	2.00
Batch and Flex output	5.00	10.00
Priority input	3.60	7.20
Priority output	18.00	36.00

Caching is implicit only; the page says explicit context caching is not supported for Argon. Grounding with Google Search or Google Maps keeps its existing terms: 5,000 free requests a month shared across Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000. Argon is not offered on the API's free tier or on the Google AI Pro plan, and Google states that paid-tier traffic is not used to improve its products.

Wider access the same day

Also on 13 October, Google made Argon available in the Gemini app for its consumer subscription plans. At its September launch, access had been limited to selected security teams in Google's own programme. The two changes together suggest Google is moving Argon from a limited release to general use, and pricing it for that.

How to plan for the change

Output tokens dominate most agent and coding workloads, and Argon counts its thinking tokens as output, so the output rate is the one to model. A workload that is not latency-sensitive can halve its bill by moving to the Batch or Flex tiers, which stay at half the standard rate after the increase. Teams that signed up during the launch window should set budget alerts before 1 December rather than discover the change on an invoice.

Argon in our catalogue

We list Gemini 4 Argon among the 121 models on our AI model board, where its record already carried the $4 and $20 rates Google announced as the price after launch.

Sources

• Google AI for Developers: Gemini API pricing (last updated 13 October 2026), 13 October 2026
• Google: Gemini 4 Argon announcement, 30 September 2026
• Google: Gemini 4 Argon comes to the Gemini app, 13 October 2026
• Trending Topics: Gemini 4 Argon launch pricing, 13 October 2026