Google has released Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a faster and cheaper member of its Gemini 4 family, and it is switching on for ordinary users straight away: Google Search for everyone, and the model menu in the Gemini app. Developers get it in Google AI Studio and the Gemini API.
Google calls Hydrogen its “daily driver”, meant for fast coding and agent-style chores while Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon handle the hardest reasoning. Even so, Google says its default setting scores 51 on the Artificial Analysis index, a point ahead of Argon, and the top setting reaches 54.
Google’s launch post lists API pricing of $1.50 for every million tokens sent in and $7.50 for every million generated, with no surcharge as the 1 million-token context fills up. Google also added a fourth reasoning tier, xhigh, on top of the existing three.
Compared with Gemini 3.8 Flash, Google claims Hydrogen completes tasks 2.5 times quicker on its default level, and its Terminal-Bench 4.1 result rises from 18.2% to 57%. It also says fabricated claims fall by more than five times. These are Google’s own benchmark figures, not independent tests.
For coders, Google is adding an Orchestrator to its Antigravity tool. It switches between Carbon and Hydrogen inside one session, and on Terminal-Bench 4.0 Google says it came close to Carbon’s success rate while using 24% less quota and finishing 19% faster. In parallel-agent setups, Carbon can coordinate while Hydrogen does the worker and checking jobs.
On the leaderboards Google cites, Hydrogen ranks fifth on arena.ai’s Agent Arena and posts 58.8% on HLE-Diamond, which Google says leads its class. Google also reports big safety gains over 3.8 Flash: up to 81% less overreach in agent tasks, and a 96.7% score on its own internal honesty test. All of these numbers come from Google’s evaluations.
For everyone else, the change shows up in Search. Google says Hydrogen understands multi-part questions and typos better, runs more simultaneous sub-searches so it surfaces a wider range of links, and answers with more images, comparison tables and custom tools. The Search upgrade covers all languages the AI Mode supports today. In the Gemini app, Google says it follows tone and format instructions more closely and pulls context from Gmail and Drive when you allow it.
Access is tiered. Gemini in Google Sheets gets Hydrogen first for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, and Antigravity access is for paid Pro and Ultra plans. Carbon, the flagship, opened to paying developers and Ultra subscribers only on 10 November. Google says Hydrogen is how it brings Gemini 4 to everyone.
