Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon on October 28 with API pricing of $2 and $10 per million tokens at launch. Access is limited to cyber defenders. What it costs and what to do before it reaches your plan.
Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon on October 28, two weeks after Gemini 4 Argon reached paid subscribers. Carbon is the newer and stronger model. You can’t use it yet unless you work in security.
According to Google’s blog post, access starts this week for a subset of cyber defenders. It expands to more trusted partners through Google’s Fairwind Program. Google says it will bring Carbon to developers, businesses and consumers “as soon as possible.” It names no date, and its post doesn’t mention the Gemini app, Workspace or any subscription plan. 9to5Google reported the launch the same day.
What Google says it can do
Everything below is Google’s own reporting. Independent tests are not out.
- Ranking. Google says Carbon is first on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.0 with a score of 59, and fourth on WebDev Arena at 1768 Elo, up 89 points.
- Security work. The model scores 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro, which measures finding vulnerabilities. It reaches 54.8% on ExploitGym and 71.0% on CWE-bench, which measures patching. Google says these ran without guardrails.
- Long jobs. Google says internal teams have run Carbon for days on multi-step engineering work, such as finding the root cause of a bug and patching it.
- Behavior. Google reports about half as many unsupported claims as Argon, and almost 80% fewer high-severity misalignment alerts in live coding. Its prompt-injection test shows 0.0% attack success, against 0.7% for Argon.
What it costs
The API prices match Argon’s. Google lists $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens at launch, and $4 and $20 after the introductory period. Cached input costs 95% less. Google’s post doesn’t give the end date for the introductory price. For Argon, 9to5Google reported November 30.
Because only a small group has access, most teams can’t pay that price today. Nothing in Google’s post says Carbon will cost more than Argon in the consumer plans when it arrives. It doesn’t say it will cost the same either.
What it means if you pay for AI seats
Don’t change anything this week. Carbon isn’t available to you, and Argon is already in Google’s $19.99 AI Pro plan, as our Argon report covers.
Do two things. First, if you build on the Gemini API, run your evaluations on Argon now, while the introductory price holds. A second model at the same price tier means you can swap it in later and compare. Second, if your company runs on Google Workspace, ask your admin whether Argon and Carbon will reach your Workspace license. Personal AI plans sit outside your admin controls and data retention settings.
The security numbers matter if you run a small team without a security hire. A model that finds and patches bugs well helps attackers too, and Google restricted Carbon to defenders first. Google hasn’t said how long that restriction lasts. Treat the pace of patching on your own code and dependencies as a bigger risk than before.