Google on Thursday introduced Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a model it said is built for everyday coding and agentic workflows and priced at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens, flat across a 1 million-token context window. The Verge and TechCrunch also reported the launch.
Google described Hydrogen as a faster execution model and distinguished it from Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon, which it called its frontier models for deep, long-horizon reasoning. It said Hydrogen surpassed Argon on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at Hydrogen’s default high thinking level, 51 to 50, and reached 54 at a new “xhigh” setting. The company also said Hydrogen finishes tasks 2.5 times faster than Gemini 3.8 Flash at that default setting. Those figures come from Google. The model has four thinking levels: low, medium, high, and xhigh.
Hydrogen is priced for the Gemini API’s paid tier, Google said, and Google’s developer documentation lists a rate-limited free tier as well. Output pricing includes thinking tokens, according to that documentation. The company said the model is available in all tiers of Google AI Studio and the Gemini API, and that it is rolling out in Google Search for all users. Robby Stein, vice president of product at Google Search, told The Verge that Hydrogen is “now the new default model in AI Mode” and is “being used for your hardest questions in AI Overviews,” calling it “the biggest model upgrade to Search yet.”
In the Gemini app, availability depends on the account. Google said Hydrogen is rolling out in the app, and a footnote to its announcement said free users will get it “via auto model selection when it’s the appropriate model for the prompt.” Google’s Gemini Apps help page says that, with auto selection on, most prompts still use Flash-Lite and that prompts needing more reasoning may use Hydrogen. It lists Hydrogen as a selectable chat model on Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra plans. Paid Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can also use Hydrogen in Google Antigravity, Google said, and Gemini in Google Sheets is starting with those same paid plans and with eligible business subscriptions.
Google said the rollout began Thursday and is global.