Google releases Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a fast, lower-cost Gemini 4 model
Google said Nov. 12 that it has released Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a fast, lower-cost model in the same Gemini 4 family as the Gemini 4 Carbon model it launched earlier this week. Google says Hydrogen is built for quick, everyday tasks, while Carbon and its other top model, Argon, are meant for harder problems that need longer reasoning. It is rolling out in the Gemini app, Gemini for business, Google Search and Google's tools for developers. For businesses that build on Google's API, the price is $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens (tokens are the small chunks of text AI services bill by), the same rate across its full 1 million-token context window, which is how much text it can take in at once. Google says Hydrogen makes up facts more than five times less often than the older Gemini 3.8 Flash model, and that it tied for the top score on a legal research benchmark called the Vals Legal Research Bench. Those are figures Google reports, and we have not checked them independently. What this means for you: if your firm uses Gemini for business, Hydrogen is now available to choose in the model menu or through the API, and free Gemini app users may get it automatically. Fewer made-up facts is not zero, so keep checking every citation and quote before it goes into a filing. This is general information, not legal advice.
Source: blog.google (opens in a new tab)