By the toolist.ai editors. Researched from public sources, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 13, 2026; prices checked October 13, 2026.

Gemini 4 Argon vs Claude Opus 5.5

Verdict

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher than Gemini 4 Argon on all six Artificial Analysis benchmarks both have, each at its highest setting, from the Intelligence Index (57.6 against 52.6) to GDPval-AA (1866 against 1624 Elo). Argon costs half as much per token until November 30, 2026 ($2 and $10 per million against $4 and $20); from December 1 its prices rise to $4 and $20, the same as Opus 5.5. Choose Argon for cheaper high-volume work before December or for video and audio input; choose Opus 5.5 for the stronger published scores.

Verdict based on published prices, limits and benchmarks, not on our own tests.

Choose Gemini 4 Argon if

  • You want the lower price while it lasts: the support chatbot workload costs $1,000 a month against $2,000 through November 30, 2026
  • You send video or audio input; Claude Opus 5.5 accepts neither
  • Hard reasoning that needs more than 128,000 tokens of thinking and output in one response: with long decode (background execution) Argon can use up to 1,048,576 tokens minus the input; without it, it stops at 65,536 against Opus 5.5's 128,000
  • You build in Google AI Studio

Choose Claude Opus 5.5 if

  • You want the higher published scores (66.0 against 63.8 on the Coding Agent Index; 61.4% against 57.1% on Humanity's Last Exam)
  • Your work is knowledge work (1866 against 1624 Elo on GDPval-AA)
  • You need a later knowledge cutoff (June 2026 against March 2026)
  • You are choosing for after December 1, 2026, when both cost $4 and $20 per million tokens

Price

Input costs 2 times as much on Claude Opus 5.5 as on Gemini 4 Argon. Output costs 2 times as much on Claude Opus 5.5 as on Gemini 4 Argon.

Per million tokensGemini 4 ArgonClaude Opus 5.5
Input$2 source$4 source
Cached input$0.10 source$0.20 source
Output$10 source$20 source

Gemini 4 Argon: Introductory prices run through November 30, 2026; from December 1, 2026 input costs $4, output $20 and cached input $0.20 per million tokens. Output includes thinking tokens. Caching is implicit only; explicit caching is not supported. There is no long-context surcharge. Batch and Flex cost half; Priority costs 1.8 times the standard price. Grounding with Google Search and with Google Maps each has 5,000 free requests a month shared across Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000. Not available on the free tier.

Claude Opus 5.5: Cache writes cost $5 per million tokens (5-minute cache) or $8 (1-hour cache). The Batch API costs half. There is no long-context surcharge. Fast mode costs $8 in and $40 out.

Worked example: what a month costs

We priced three monthly workloads at the standard rates. The provider does not publish these figures.

WorkloadGemini 4 ArgonClaude Opus 5.5
Support chatbot
100,000 replies, each 3,000 input and 400 output tokens, no caching (300M in, 40M out)		 $1,000$2,000
Document Q&A
5,000 questions over the same 60,000-token document set (90% cache hits), 800 output tokens each (300M in, 4M out)		 $127$254
Coding agent
200 tasks, each 1.5 million input tokens (90% cache hits) and 50,000 output tokens (300M in, 10M out)		 $187$374

Price your own workload

ModelCost a month
Gemini 4 Argon $150
Claude Opus 5.5 $300

Standard API prices, no batch or priority discounts. Cached input is billed at the cache-read price; cache-write charges are not included. Reasoning models bill their thinking as output tokens.

Limits and release dates

Gemini 4 ArgonClaude Opus 5.5
ReleasedOctober 13, 2026 sourceSeptember 22, 2026 source
Context window1,048,576 tokens source1,000,000 tokens source
Maximum output65,536 tokens source128,000 tokens source
Knowledge cutoffMarch 2026 sourceJune 2026 source
Input and outputText, images, video, audio and PDF in; text out sourceText and images in; text out source
API model namegemini-4-argonclaude-opus-5-5

Benchmarks

Scores as published by the provider or measured by Artificial Analysis; higher is better. A dash means no score was published.

BenchmarkGemini 4 ArgonClaude Opus 5.5
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 52.6 (high thinking, the highest level) source57.6 (max effort) source
Coding Agent Index 63.8 (Antigravity CLI harness, high thinking) source66.0 (Claude Code harness, max effort) source
Terminal-Bench 4.0 57.1% (high thinking) source59.6% (max effort) source
Humanity's Last Exam 57.1% (high thinking) source61.4% (max effort) source
GDPval-AA v2.1 (Elo) 1624 (high thinking) source1866 (max effort) source
SciCode 61.8% (high thinking) source66.9% (max effort) source
Intelligence Index at everyday effort –51.2 (medium effort, the API default) source
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 –59.0% (max effort) source
Output speed –78.8 tokens/s (medium effort, Anthropic API) source

Benchmark and speed data from Artificial Analysis where linked.

Read more

Sources