Pick up any top-tier artificial intelligence tool these days and your wallet will usually take a serious beating—mainly when we talk about serious work. Google wants to change that math with its new Gemini 4 Carbon model, which delivers near-peak smarts without the sky-high price tag. Fresh benchmark numbers show this budget-friendly release gives popular rivals like Claude a real run for their money.
Research firm SemiAnalysis just published its new GDPx benchmark. They tested top models across two hundred and six tasks in coding, finance, legal work, and biology. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 took the top spot on the overall leaderboard, but Gemini 4 Carbon landed right on its heels in second place (via 9to5Google). The actual performance gap between the two models was tiny, which makes the massive price difference the real headline story.
Big performance gains without the high price tag
Running complex tasks through Claude Opus 5.5 costs about $51 per task based on the firm’s detailed breakdown. Google’s Gemini 4 Carbon handles those exact same jobs for just over $16 per task. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra scored lower overall while costing an eye-watering $54 per task.
The benchmark leaderboard shifts around when researchers pull out specific categories like cybersecurity, biology, and safety guardrails. Stripping away those security tests puts GPT-6 Astra at the top of the board, with GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Sonnet 5.5 edging past Gemini 4 Carbon. SemiAnalysis noted that this modified view fits closer with how engineers feel about everyday model speeds during regular coding sessions.
Cybersecurity strengths and upcoming market launch
Google performed exceptionally well in specialized cybersecurity tasks, where both Gemini 4 Carbon and Argon beat out OpenAI and Anthropic models. Only Meta’s Muse models managed to score higher in security tests, taking the lead in that specific category by a clear margin. Google’s existing Gemini 4 Argon model landed in eighth place overall, keeping a price tag slightly below Carbon.
Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon on October 28 while teasing impressive performance gains over rival software options. The company has not given an exact public release date yet, but customers should see the model drop across Google platforms soon. Delivering top-tier intelligence at a fraction of the usual cost may give Google a huge advantage in the ongoing AI race.
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