Gemini 4 Carbon: Access, Pricing & Benchmarks

Gemini 4 Carbon is Google’s new frontier model for coding and cyber defense. Only some cyber defenders can use it; the API starts at $2/$10 per 1M tokens.

Quick answer: Google DeepMind announced Gemini 4 Carbon on October 28, 2026, two weeks after Gemini 4 Argon. You can’t sign up for it yet. Google is giving it to a subset of cyber defenders first and will phase in more trusted partners through its Fairwind Program before opening it to developers, businesses and consumers. When it does open, the API will cost $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens at the introductory price, then $4 and $20. We checked every figure against the Gemini 4 Carbon announcement on November 1, 2026.

What Gemini 4 Carbon is

Carbon is Google’s strongest model so far, built for long, multi-step engineering work and for the whole cyber defense cycle: finding vulnerabilities, checking which ones can be exploited, and writing the fix. Google says its own teams have watched Carbon keep working for days on hard tasks, such as tracing a subtle bug through a large codebase and patching it.

• #1 on Artificial Analysis: Carbon scores 59 on version 5.0 of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, the top spot.
• Web development: it gained 89 Elo points to reach #4 (1768) on WebDev Arena.
• Secure code: on Google’s internal tests it more than doubles Argon’s success rate at generating secure code.
• Patches: Google’s Chrome team reported Carbon did more than 10x better than another lab’s large frontier model at writing high-quality patches.

Is Gemini 4 Carbon available?

Not to the public. As of November 1, 2026, access works like this:

• Now: a subset of cyber defenders, chosen by Google.
• Next: more trusted partners, added gradually through the Fairwind Program.
• Later: developers, businesses and consumers through Google’s products, which Google says will happen “as soon as possible” once it has more feedback on the guardrails. There’s no date yet.
• Testing: Google is taking part in the U.S. government’s voluntary pre-release model testing process.

That’s the same path Argon took: limited access first, then a wider launch. Our Gemini 4 Argon release date and access guide shows how that rollout went, which is the best hint for Carbon’s timing.

Gemini 4 Carbon Pricing (2026)

Price period	Input	Cached input	Output
Introductory price	$2.00	95% off input ($0.10)	$10.00
After the intro period	$4.00	Not stated yet	$20.00

Google says Carbon launches at the same introductory price as Argon, with cached input tokens 95% cheaper than regular input. It hasn’t said when the introductory period ends for Carbon, so plan budgets on the $4 and $20 rate. There’s no free tier and no consumer plan for Carbon yet. If you’re new to token pricing, our explainer on tokens in AI shows what a million tokens means in pages of text.

Gemini 4 Carbon benchmarks

Google reports these external scores, evaluated without guardrails:

• SEC-bench Pro: 88.2% for finding real vulnerabilities in real-world software.
• ExploitGym: 54.8% for checking which vulnerabilities can actually be exploited.
• CWE-bench: 71.0% for turning a confirmed finding into a working code fix.

These are Google’s numbers, apart from the Intelligence Index score. Our Artificial Analysis guide explains how that independent leaderboard is built.

Safety and alignment changes

• Less cheating: successful cheating on Terminal-Bench 4.0 fell to 0.0%, with cheating attempts at 0.4%. High-severity misalignment alerts in Google’s live coding environments dropped by almost 80%.
• Fewer made-up claims: Google says Carbon makes about half as many unsupported claims as Argon.
• Stays in scope: overreach fell 26% and under-service 29%.
• Prompt injection: 0.0% attack success on Gray Swan’s Indirect Prompt Injection benchmark, down from Argon’s 0.7%.

Gemini 4 Carbon vs Gemini 4 Argon

Argon is the model you can actually use today, at the same introductory API price. Carbon is the stronger model for long agent runs and security work, but it’s gated. For most teams the sensible move is to build on Argon now and switch the hardest coding and security jobs to Carbon once access opens. For other frontier options, see our best AI model comparison.

Limitations

• No public access: you can’t sign up or call it through the public API yet.
• No date: Google hasn’t said when developers or consumers get it.
• Price doubles later: the $2/$10 rate is introductory.
• Mostly self-reported results: independent tests are still limited.

Gemini 4 Carbon looks like Google’s biggest step yet for security teams and long coding tasks, and its intro price matches Argon’s.

Most readers can’t use it yet. Build on Gemini 4 Argon today and keep an eye on the Fairwind Program for wider access.