In short
How they differ.
Worked out from the figures below. Prices and specs are the makers' own, read Oct 20, 2026.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper per output token: $2.50 against $10 per million tokens, so Gemini 4 Argon costs 4 times as much.
- No independent board we follow ranks both models yet.
Side by side
The specs.
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Gemini 4 Argon | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Google · US | Google · US |
| Released | Jul 21, 2026 | Sep 30, 2026 |
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.30 in / $2.50 out | $2 in / $10 out (introductory price) |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Takes in | text, image, video, audio, pdf | text, image, video, audio, pdf |
| Download and run it yourself | No | No |
| Size | Not published | Not published |
| Maker says | “Our fastest, most cost-effective 3.5 model for high-throughput execution.” | “Our flagship reasoning model with a unified 1M context window and long decodes up to 1M tokens.” |
| Sources | Prices, Oct 20, 2026 · Description | Prices, Oct 20, 2026 · Description |
Independent tests
Where they place.
Position on each board we follow (1 is best). Epoch AI's and Vectara's scores are shown; the other boards are linked for their own figures.
| Board | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Gemini 4 Argon |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI, Oct 20, 2026 | Not listed | #5164.56 |
| LMArena textLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #1 |
| LMArena creative writingLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| LMArena coding chatsLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #1 |
| LMArena WebDevLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #10 |
| LMArena mathLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #1 |
| LMArena Agent ArenaLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #6 |
| Humanity's Last ExamScale AI | Not listed | #3 |
| SWE-Bench ProScale AI, Sep 22, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| Vals IndexVals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #3 |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0Vals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #6 |
| Vibe Code BenchVals AI, Oct 18, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| ProofBenchVals AI, Oct 12, 2026 | Not listed | #7 |
| CUA-bench (games)Vals AI, Oct 13, 2026 | Not listed | #8 |
| Vectara hallucination testVectara, Oct 16, 2026 | Not listed | #8312.1% |
More comparisons