Does Gemini 4 Argon Match GPT-6 Astra, and What Does It Cost?

Does Google DeepMind's Gemini 4 Argon truly match GPT-6 Astra, and what will running it actually cost developers? We break down the independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index results, agentic benchmark splits, and output token economics. The analysis covers introductory versus standard task pricing alongside current access limits.

Key figures:

• 53 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index for Argon at high reasoning, tying GPT-6 Astra at max reasoning
• $1.99 per Intelligence Index task, measured by Artificial Analysis while the 50% launch discount and the 95% cached-input discount both apply
• $3.98 per Intelligence Index task once standard pricing takes effect
• 62 thousand average output tokens per Intelligence Index task for Argon

Figures on screen are from this episode’s sourced claims. Unverified estimates are not shown as on-screen numbers.

Chapters:

00:00 Tied at the top, cheaper for now

00:35 What Google announced and who gets it

01:59 The independent index score

03:03 Where agentic results split

04:38 Rarely wrong vs more often right

05:59 The real cost per task

07:41 Long outputs and who should care

Sources:

• Gemini 4 Argon: our next era of frontier intelligence (Google DeepMind): https://deepmind.google/blog/gemini-4-argon-our-next-era-of-frontier-intelligence/
• Gemini 4 Argon: Google is back as one of the top three labs in intelligence achieved (Artificial Analysis): https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/gemini-4-argon-google-top-three-labs

Narration is synthesised.