Why it matters
A leaderboard screenshot from two weeks ago said Argon matched Astra for less money. The same scoreboard says something else today, and Google's price changes on 1 December. If you picked a model off that screenshot, here is where the numbers stand now.
I think leaderboards are a weather report now. Great for today, not so much for next month.
What the scoreboard says now
What the scoreboard says now
On 30 September Artificial Analysis put Gemini 4 Argon (high reasoning) at 53 on its Intelligence Index, level with GPT-6 Astra (max, 53). Argon cost USD 1.99 per index task at Google's 50 percent launch discount, 60 percent of Astra's USD 3.26. Artificial Analysis said the saving came from the lower token price: Argon used about 62,000 output tokens per task, Astra about 27,000.
On 13 October it repeated the tie when Argon became generally available. On 27 October it released Intelligence Index v5.
Artificial Analysis released Intelligence Index v5: two new benchmarks (FrontierCode 2.0, real coding tasks graded on whether a maintainer would merge the change, and Terminal-Bench-Science, scientific research tasks in a terminal) and three upgraded ones. 60 percent of the index now runs on private test sets or held-out answers.
On v5, Claude Opus 5.5 (max) leads at 58, GPT-6 Astra (max) scores 57 and GPT-6.1 Sol (max) 55. Anthropic and OpenAI hold the top five. Gemini 4 Argon (high) is next at 50. Argon still leads one of the nine evaluations: AutomationBench-AA, agentic work across business software, at 78 percent.
Sources: Artificial Analysis on X (30 September 2026), Artificial Analysis on X (13 October 2026), and Artificial Analysis, Intelligence Index v5 (27 October 2026)
The money
The money
Artificial Analysis also measures what one index task costs to run: the tokens a model uses times its prices. On 28 October it showed USD 3.84 per task for Argon and USD 6.24 for Astra. That is about 38 percent less for Argon (our arithmetic), even though Argon wrote about twice as many output tokens on the index (110 million against 54 million). Chatty, and on sale.
Google charges USD 2 per million input tokens and USD 10 per million output tokens for Argon through 30 November 2026, and USD 4 and USD 20 from 1 December. At those prices and the same token use, one task comes to about USD 7.68. That number is our own arithmetic. Artificial Analysis has not published it. Every Argon price on Google's list doubles that day, cached input included (USD 0.10 to 0.20 per million).
Sources: Artificial Analysis, Gemini 4 Argon vs GPT-6 Astra (read 28 October 2026) and Google, Gemini Developer API pricing (read 28 October 2026)
What these numbers do not tell you
What these numbers do not tell you
These are Artificial Analysis's test tasks. Your bill depends on what you ask a model to do, how long its answers run and how much of your prompt is cached.
The comparison is Argon at high reasoning, the highest Google offers, against Astra at max. Other effort settings land elsewhere on the chart, and Artificial Analysis says effort matters more in v5 than before.
We have not tested Argon or Astra on our own work for this page.
Source: Artificial Analysis, Intelligence Index v5 (27 October 2026)
Read the sources
Read the sources
Every number above comes from these pages. The scoreboard ones can move, so the date we read them is next to each.
- Read the announcementArtificial Analysis: Intelligence Index v5
What changed on 27 October, the new top five and the cost per task of the leading models.
- Open the comparisonArtificial Analysis: Argon against Astra
The live comparison: index score, cost per task, cost to run the index.
Our screenshot of the Artificial Analysis comparison page, 28 October 2026 - Open Google's price listGoogle: Gemini API pricing
Argon's launch price through 30 November and the price from 1 December.
Our screenshot of Google's Gemini API pricing page, 28 October 2026 - Open the postArtificial Analysis on X, 30 September
The tie at 53 and the 60 percent cost per task, on the old index.
Our screenshot of the Artificial Analysis post on X - Open the postArtificial Analysis on X, 13 October
The tie repeated when Argon became generally available.
Our screenshot of the Artificial Analysis post on X
Numbers read on Artificial Analysis on 28 October 2026 (Intelligence Index v5, released 27 October). Google's prices read the same day. Check again before you rely on them: this page exists because they changed.
Yes, that's my AI avatar in the video. Same opinions, better lighting.