Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on September 30, initially rolling it out to trusted cyber defenders through the Fairwind Program. Wider release is planned to start with paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers after further safeguards work. Introductory pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 for output. A footnote sets the later price at $4 and $20; it does not specify when the introductory period ends. The announcement reports 77.9% on DeepSWE v1.1 and 51.3% on AutomationBench. Its comparison table also shows weaknesses: Argon scores 57.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 versus Opus 5.5's 66.4%, and 55.0% on FrontierSWE v2 versus Astra's 65.5%. Different evaluations and settings support workload-specific choices, rather than one overall winner. Google raises the output limit to 1 million tokens from 64,000 for longer trajectories. That is generation headroom, not a guarantee of better answers or inexpensive completion. A business should separate three questions: whether it can obtain access, which tasks improve, and what an accepted result costs. The initial release answers the first only for selected defenders. The table gives reasons to test sustained software and business workflows, while preserving competitors as options for tasks where Argon trails. The larger output limit makes a spending cap more important. Set task budgets and stop conditions before allowing an agent to run unattended; published token prices alone do not limit a long trajectory. Google is still strengthening safeguards before broad release and has announced no end date for the introductory price. Build a pilot plan now, but avoid a production dependency until availability and contractual terms are clear. Choose one long-running workflow for an Argon pilot and set a task budget at the later token prices. Google’s vendor-selected comparison includes different benchmarks, versions, tool settings, and computer-use subsets. Argon scores 65.4% on Vals Finance Agent v2 and 19.6% on Harvey’s Legal Agent Benchmark, while trailing Opus on Terminal-Bench 4.0 and Astra on FrontierSWE v2. These mixed tests do not establish an equal-effort, independently assessed overall ranking. See the linked evaluation methodology for testing provenance and per-benchmark settings. Credit: Google. Source: Gemini 4 Argon: our next era of frontier intelligence, 2026-09-30. Gemini 4 Argon evaluation methodology: Testing provenance and per-benchmark settings, including external knowledge-work results, computer-use subsets, and tool access. Linked from the announcement’s benchmark table; document has no exact publication date.