❯ Google launches Gemini 4 Hydrogen across Search, Gemini and coding tools with faster task execution

A faster model reaches everyday productsGoogle released Gemini 4 Hydrogen on November 12 for everyday coding and multi-step workflows. Deployment is beginning across the Gemini app, Google Search, AI Studio, the Gemini API and enterprise products. Antigravity access requires Google AI Pro or Ultra, while free Gemini users receive access through automatic selection when appropriate.

Speed and spending vary with reasoning effortGoogle says Hydrogen completes tasks 2.5 times as fast as Gemini 3.8 Flash at its default high reasoning setting. Its one-million-token context supports long documents and substantial code inputs. API pricing is $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens; four reasoning levels, from low to xhigh, affect actual usage and latency.

Independent tests show a mixed cost advantageArtificial Analysis gives Hydrogen an Intelligence Index score of 54 at xhigh, close to Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol at their highest settings. It estimates per-task spending at roughly one-third of Sonnet’s but 2.5 times Sol’s. Visual document reasoning and lower hallucination rates are strengths, while terminal coding results do not show an across-the-board lead.

Tasks can move between modelsGoogle is also adding Orchestrator to Antigravity, allowing a session to switch dynamically between models such as Carbon and Hydrogen. A stronger model can make architectural decisions while Hydrogen edits and tests code. Google reports near-Carbon success on Terminal-Bench 4.0 with 24% less quota use and 19% faster completion, offering developers another way to allocate reasoning effort across a workflow.

▮ SIGNALAs demanding judgment and frequent execution move to different models, developer tools compete increasingly on task routing, and completion costs depend more on the combination they choose.