Google's new flagship ties GPT-6 Astra but still trails Claude Opus
Google returns to the frontier tier: cheap per token but token-hungry, no public availability date yet, real-world performance still unproven.
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Google has released Gemini 4 Argon, a new flagship model that matches GPT-6 Astra in independent testing but still trails Claude Opus 5.5.
According to The Decoder on September 30, this is Google's first frontier model in more than seven months. On the Intelligence Index from Artificial Analysis, an independent benchmarking firm, Argon scores 53 points, 23 above its predecessor Gemini 3.1 Pro. That ties GPT-6 Astra and remains below Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 at 58.
The introductory price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, rising later to $4 and $20. The discount comes from lower rates, not efficiency: Argon burns an average of 62,000 output tokens per task, more than double GPT-6 Astra's 27,000, and once the discount ends its per-task cost runs about 20 percent higher.
The output limit rises from 64,000 to one million tokens, which Google calls an industry first. For now the model goes only to cyber defenders in Google's Fairwind program, with no date set for API and paid-tier access; Google's own benchmark results look considerably rosier.