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Google's Gemini API price list doubles every per-token rate on its flagship reasoning model, Gemini 4 Argon, on December 1, 2026 — a month before the Gemini 3 Flash step this desk reported in September.

4 min read

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Google's Gemini API pricing page gives Gemini 4 Argon a December 1, 2026 doubling on every per-token rate — a month before the January 1, 2027 step this desk reported in September for the Gemini 3 Flash models. Standard input rises from $2.00 to $4.00 per million tokens and output, including thinking tokens, from $10.00 to $20.00; the Batch, Flex, Priority and invite-only Contributor tiers step the same way. Argon is not offered on the free tier at any price, and Google's changelog states no Argon price.

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If you pay Google to run Gemini 4 Argon through its developer API, your per-token price doubles on December 1, 2026. Google's Gemini API price list states that step for every per-token rate on Argon, which Google's model page calls "our flagship reasoning model" — a month before the January 1, 2027 step this desk reported in September for Google's Gemini 3 Flash models.

The numbers

Paid tier, per 1M tokens in US dollars, as the page lists each line:

Rate Through Nov 30, 2026 From Dec 1, 2026
Standard, input $2.00 $4.00
Standard, output (incl. thinking tokens) $10.00 $20.00
Standard, context caching $0.10 $0.20
Batch, input / output $1.00 / $5.00 $2.00 / $10.00
Batch, context caching $0.05 $0.10
Flex, input / output $1.00 / $5.00 $2.00 / $10.00
Flex, context caching $0.05 $0.10
Priority, input / output $3.60 / $18.00 $7.20 / $36.00
Priority, context caching $0.18 $0.36
Contributor (invite-only), input / output $1.00 / $5.00 $2.00 / $10.00
Contributor, context caching $0.05 $0.10

Each line above is written as two dated prices. The standard input line reads: "$2.00 through November 30, 2026. $4.00 starting December 1, 2026." By this desk's comparison of the listed rates, every second figure is exactly twice the first. The page notes Argon's context caching is "Implicit caching only (explicit caching is not supported)", and states: "Gemini 4 Argon is not available on the Free tier."

Two paid Argon rates carry no December step: grounding with Google Search, at 5,000 free search requests a month then $14 per 1,000 requests, and grounding with Google Maps, at 5,000 free requests a month then $14 per 1,000 search queries. Each is a single figure with no second dated price, and both are per-request charges, not per-token.

A month ahead of the Flash step

This desk's September 28 record reported that Gemini 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 Flash double their paid rates on January 1, 2027. Argon carries its own doubling a month earlier. The page does not connect the two steps; Argon has its own date.

Google's changelog dates Argon's general-availability release to October 13, 2026. That entry states no price; it points to a separate page for "API changes, pricing, and migration guidance" — Argon's model page, read today, which states no price either.

Internet Archive's last capture of the pricing page with no Argon section at all is October 12 at 21:57 UTC. Its next capture, October 13 at 16:16 UTC, already carries the December 1 step at the figures read today, for the four tiers the page then listed. The index shows no capture between those two. A capture is a snapshot, so the step is dated only to that gap — not to a day, and not to the moment of release.

Before December 1

  • Budget December at twice November's per-token spend on Argon, if usage does not change.
  • Check your billing tier's monthly spend cap. Google's billing page, read today, sets those caps in dollars — $250 for Tier 1, $2,000 for Tier 2 — and says that past the cap "service is paused for all projects linked to that billing account until the start of the next billing cycle". On prepaid billing, when the balance hits $0, "all API keys in all projects linked to that billing account will stop working simultaneously."
  • Argon is not offered on the free tier at any price, so there is no free-tier rate for this step to change.

What the record does not say

  • Whether Google announced the step. No page read states a notice. The pricing page's footer says only "Last updated 2026-10-19 UTC" — the day this desk read it — which does not establish when the December 1 line was written. A price list carrying two dated rates is not a customer notice, and Google's API terms were not read, so what notice they require is unknown here.
  • Exactly when the step first appeared. The captures bracket it between October 12 at 21:57 UTC and October 13 at 16:16 UTC, and no closer.
  • Whether the dates hold. The page was last updated the day it was read and can change again.
  • Other price lists. This is Google's Gemini Developer API price list. Google Cloud pricing, including Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, was not read.

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