Google opens Gemini 4 Carbon to paying developers at $2 and $10

Google opens Gemini 4 Carbon to paying developers at $2 and $10

10 November 2026: Google has made Gemini 4 Carbon, which it calls its strongest model, generally available through the Gemini API at an introductory $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. The introductory price ends on 30 November 2026; Google's pricing page lists $4 and $20 from 1 December.

Who can use it now

Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google's chief AI architect, announced on the company blog that Carbon is available to developers, enterprises, scientists and consumers. Through the API it is open to all paying developers and enterprises in Google AI Studio and in Gemini for business. Google's pricing page says Carbon is not available on the free tier.

Google AI Ultra subscribers are getting it in Google Antigravity, the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search. Cybersecurity defenders can apply to the Fairwind Program, where Google released Carbon two weeks earlier. Scientists in Google's free six-month Antigravity programme get access to both Carbon and the earlier Gemini 4 Argon.

The prices as Google lists them

Google says Carbon carries the same introductory price as Gemini 4 Argon. The pricing page gives these figures per million tokens on the paid tier:

• Standard input: $2.00 through 30 November, $4.00 from 1 December
• Standard output, including thinking tokens: $10.00 through 30 November, $20.00 from 1 December
• Context caching: $0.10 through 30 November, $0.20 from 1 December, with implicit caching only
• Batch input and output: $1.00 and $5.00 through 30 November, then $2.00 and $10.00

Grounding with Google Search includes 5,000 free requests a month, shared across Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000 requests. Google's footnote says the post-introductory price applies to the Carbon model intended for public access.

Same price as Argon, more tokens per answer

Google says Argon remains the right choice for most software engineering and knowledge work, and positions Carbon for tasks that test the limits of a model, such as multi-step coding and debugging and open-ended scientific research. It also says Carbon uses more tokens than Argon because it explores thoroughly, reasons deeply and runs extended verification loops.

That matters for budgeting, because a bill depends on tokens consumed as well as the price of each. Google's own comparison is in cost per task rather than per token.

Benchmark claims, as Google reports them

Google says Carbon ranks first on CursorBench 4.0, Perplexity's WANDR and Zapier's AutomationBench, at more than twice as low a cost per task as the next best external model. On the Multimodal Knowledge Agent benchmark, built with Artificial Analysis, it says Carbon ranks second while costing more than six times less per task than the top-performing model. These are Google's reported results.

Google is also previewing a /swarm feature in Antigravity, which turns one prompt into a coordinated team of agents that developers can track in real time.

Sources

• Google: Gemini 4 Carbon is now available, 10 November 2026, 10 November 2026
• Google AI for Developers: Gemini Developer API pricing, 10 November 2026