Google’s Gemini 4 Hydrogen brings a fast, cheaper model to everyone

Google has launched Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a fast, lower-cost model for coding and AI agents. It is available to everyone in the Gemini app and Search, and to developers at $1.50 per million input tokens. Google says it nearly matches its flagship Argon.

Google has launched Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a faster and cheaper model built for coding and AI agents, the company announced on Thursday. Unlike its more powerful Gemini 4 models, Hydrogen is open to everyone, including free users of the Gemini app and Google Search.

For developers, it costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens. That is less than half the standard price of Google’s flagship Gemini 4 Argon. Hydrogen can handle up to 1 million tokens of input at once.

Google says Hydrogen finishes tasks 2.5 times faster than the older Gemini 3.8 Flash. On a ranking by independent tester Artificial Analysis, it scores one point higher than Argon at its default setting. Vals AI calls it the cheapest and fastest model in its top six.

Hydrogen is meant to do the everyday work while bigger models plan. Google also launched Orchestrator in its Antigravity coding tool, which switches between Hydrogen and its top model, Gemini 4 Carbon. Google says this gets close to Carbon’s results while using 24% less quota.

Google also says Hydrogen makes up facts five times less often than 3.8 Flash. In Search, it is meant to handle messy, multi-part questions and link to a wider range of websites.

Hydrogen still trails some rivals. Artificial Analysis puts its top setting one point behind Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 5.5, and OpenAI recently cut GPT-6 prices with cheaper models of its own.