Google launches Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a faster model for Search, the Gemini app and developers
Google released Gemini 4 Hydrogen on Thursday, November 12, and it is rolling out globally to Google Search, the Gemini app and developers. The company says it built the model for speed in everyday work and that it brings Gemini 4 to everyone, including free users of Search and the Gemini app.
Where Gemini 4 Hydrogen sits in the lineup
Google already offers 2 frontier Gemini 4 models, Argon and Carbon, which it pitches for long, difficult reasoning work. Google says Hydrogen is built for rapid execution of everyday coding and agentic tasks, either on its own or as the worker model that carries out plans drawn up by Carbon or Argon.
Google says Hydrogen scores 51 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at its default "high" thinking level, 1 point above Argon's 50, and 54 at its top setting. The model has 4 thinking levels: low, medium, high and a new xhigh tier, so developers can trade speed and cost against reasoning depth.
Google says Hydrogen finishes tasks 2.5 times faster than Gemini 3.8 Flash at its default setting and scores 57 percent on Terminal-Bench 4.1, up from 18.2 percent. The company also says Hydrogen makes more than 5 times fewer fabricated claims.
What changes in Search and the Gemini app
Hydrogen is now in Google Search for all users worldwide. Google calls it the biggest model upgrade to Search yet. The company says Search now handles complex, multi-part questions and typos better and shows more images, structured answers and comparison tables. Google also says Search now links to a wider range of websites by running more searches in parallel behind the scenes.
In the Gemini app, Hydrogen appears in the model menu. Free users get it through automatic model selection, when Gemini decides it is the right model for a prompt. Google says Hydrogen follows tone and formatting instructions more closely and calls the right tools more often, including Gmail, Google Drive and connected apps such as Dropbox and Airtable.
Gemini in Google Sheets is also getting Hydrogen, starting with Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and eligible business plans.
Price and developer access
On the Gemini API, Hydrogen costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens, at a flat rate across its full 1 million-token context window. It is available in all tiers of Google AI Studio and the Gemini API, in Gemini for business and in Android Studio.
Paid Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can also use it in Google Antigravity. Antigravity gains a feature called Orchestrator that switches between Carbon and Hydrogen within one session. Google says that on Terminal-Bench 4.0, Orchestrator came close to Carbon's success rate while using 24 percent less quota on average and finishing 19 percent faster.
On safety, Google says Hydrogen is up to 2 times less likely than Gemini 3.8 Flash to bypass permission limits when a task is blocked. It also says Hydrogen is more than 2.3 times more resilient against indirect prompt injection attacks on the Gray Swan IPI benchmark.
What it means for you
You don't need to do anything to get Hydrogen in Search. Google says it is available to all Search users globally. Free Gemini app users will see it only when automatic selection picks it, while paid subscribers can choose it from the model menu.
Developers on Gemini 3.8 Flash should test Hydrogen on their own workloads before switching. The speed and accuracy figures above are Google's own claims, and what a task costs also depends on how many tokens it uses at each thinking level.