Google DeepMind released Gemini 4 Argon on September 30, 2026, with general availability starting October 13, 2026. Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5.5 on September 22, 2026. In a comparative task to build an Eiffel Tower, Gemini 4 Argon completed the job for $0.23 in one attempt, while Claude Opus 5.5 spent 2 hours and cost $33.45.
The price difference stems from task efficiency rather than token costs alone. Gemini 4 Argon features introductory rates of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, valid until November 30, 2026. Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, following a 20% price reduction by Anthropic.
Gemini 4 Argon supports up to 1 million tokens for unified input and output, whereas Claude Opus 5.5 limits output to 128,000 tokens. In benchmarks, Argon led in 14 out of 18 categories, scoring 68.9% on the Vals Index, with strengths in legal, finance, and coding. Opus 5.5 performed better on terminal-heavy benchmarks and independent aggregates like the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
The performance gap highlights that lower per-token pricing does not guarantee lower total costs if a model requires multiple iterations to complete a task. Enterprises should account for the expiration of Argon's promotional pricing on November 30, 2026, when evaluating long-term operational budgets.
