Below named rivals per token, Google releases Gemini 4 Carbon with agent swarm feature preview

A model for demanding tasks

Google says Carbon advances beyond Argon, its other frontier model, which launched last month. The company says Argon remains a suitable choice for most software engineering and knowledge work.

Carbon, by contrast, is intended for work that tests a model’s capabilities, including complex, multi-step coding and open-ended scientific research. Google says it can compete with leading systems from Anthropic and OpenAI.

Access and agent coordination

Google has not said whether, or when, people on lower-tier subscriptions or free accounts will get access. Separately, the company is previewing a feature on Antigravity that turns one prompt into a coordinated team of agents.

Pricing and benchmark claims

The introductory price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Google says those rates are about one-fifth the cost of OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra and one-quarter the cost of Anthropic’s Fable 5.2.

The introductory prices are scheduled to double at the end of November, though Google says Carbon will remain cheaper than frontier competitors per token. Token use varies between models, so lower per-token prices do not necessarily mean lower costs for the same task.

Google’s cited benchmarks place Carbon among the strongest models across most measures, behind Fable 5.2. Benchmark results can be selectively presented by companies, so they may not show a complete comparison.