[News] Gemini 4 Argon Launches, But Google's Free Tier and Pricing Haven't Moved

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on September 30, 2026, calling it the company’s most powerful model yet, and the news traveled fast — seven outlets, from TechCrunch to Taiwan’s own cyberq.tw and mirrordaily.news, picked it up within days. Whenever a flagship model lands, the real question for everyday users isn’t the benchmark chart, it’s pricing: does a “most powerful model yet” come with a quieter price hike, or a free-tier squeeze? We went back to Google’s own subscription page to check whether the free tier and paid pricing actually moved alongside Gemini 4 Argon, and whether the plans are still worth it.

Short answer: as of our live Taiwan-based check, nothing on the pricing page changed. The free tier is still free. The paid tiers are still US$4.99, US$19.99, US$99.99 and US$199.99 a month. What did change is a little murkier — and that’s where the gap between the announcement and the fine print actually sits.

What Gemini 4 Argon changes, and what it doesn’t

Argon is a new model, not a new pricing structure. Google’s subscription page, read live from a Taiwan connection, still lists Gemini 3.6 Flash as the model available on the free tier — not Argon. The same page carries a standing footnote: access to the higher-tier Pro model “may change” for free users. That line was already there before Argon launched, and it still applies now. In plain terms, Google has never promised that free users get the newest model, or even consistent access to the mid-tier one. A big model launch doesn’t automatically mean your free account gets upgraded.

Figure: gemini.google.com official page, captured 2026-10-02.

The quota math nobody reads

Gemini’s free tier doesn’t work like a simple daily cap. Google’s own footnote describes it this way: usage is measured by “compute” — a mix of how complex your prompt is, which features you use, and how long the conversation runs — and that compute allowance resets every 5 hours, up to a weekly ceiling. So it’s not “20 messages a day.” It’s a rolling 5-hour refill with a weekly lid on top, and a long Deep Research session (an automated multi-step research feature) or an image generation burst drains it faster than plain chat. Google doesn’t publish the actual compute number, so there’s no way to know exactly how much headroom you have until you hit the wall — at which point you can buy extra AI credits (prepaid top-up quota) to keep going.

The four paid tiers, unchanged

Here’s what’s actually on the page, checked live:

• AI Plus — US$4.99/month (NT$165/month in Taiwan). This is a permanent price cut from the old US$7.99, effective June 9, 2026, and it came bundled with a storage bump from 200GB to 400GB. Plus gives 2x the free tier’s usage limit, more Deep Research runs, and a bigger image-generation quota.
• AI Pro — US$19.99/month (NT$650/month). Four times the free usage limit, 2TB of storage, a much bigger Deep Research allowance, YouTube Premium Lite thrown in, and Google One family sharing.
• AI Ultra 5x — US$99.99/month (NT$3,300/month). This is a repackaged version of what used to be a single US$250 Ultra tier, now split by usage multiplier — 5x Pro’s usage, with priority access to Gemini’s top model.
• AI Ultra 20x — US$199.99/month (NT$6,500/month). Same repackaging, but 20x Pro’s usage — and notably, it’s cheaper than the old single US$250 Ultra plan was, for more usage than that plan offered.

None of those four numbers moved around the Argon launch. The restructuring from one US$250 Ultra tier into 5x/20x options happened earlier and is a separate story from this week’s model release.

Figure: compiled by AMPM from its verified data (last verified 2026-09-24).

🔍 AMPM exclusive check

The vendor’s own announcement doesn’t say anything about pricing — it’s a model-capability launch post, and Google’s standard practice is to keep model releases and subscription pricing on separate pages. So the “exclusive” part of our check isn’t catching Google in a discrepancy; it’s confirming that the absence of a pricing announcement really does mean no pricing change, by going to the subscription page directly rather than assuming. We read gemini.google/subscriptions live from a Taiwan connection and cross-checked all four paid tiers plus the free tier footnote against our last verification on 2026-09-24. Every number matched: US$4.99 / US$19.99 / US$99.99 / US$199.99, and NT$165 / NT$650 / NT$3,300 / NT$6,500. The one thing worth flagging that the vendor doesn’t spell out anywhere prominent: the free tier’s listed model is still Gemini 3.6 Flash, not Argon, and Google has not published a date or commitment for when (or whether) free users get Argon access. If you came here expecting a free-tier upgrade alongside the Argon headlines, that upgrade hasn’t shown up on the pricing or model-access page as of this check.

☀️ AMO, the budget-minded cat

I went straight to the page expecting a catch, because that’s usually how it goes when a company ships a shiny new model. There wasn’t one — at least not in the price. Free is still free, NT$0, and all you need is a Google account. That’s genuinely generous: free users already get image editing, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, and even limited access to Nano Banana Pro, all before paying a cent. But I want to be clear-eyed about the quota: it’s not a fixed daily count, it’s compute that refills every 5 hours with a weekly ceiling, and Google won’t tell you the actual number. If you’re a light user — a few questions a day, maybe one image — free is almost certainly enough, Argon or not, since the free tier isn’t even running Argon yet. If you’re tempted to pay, AI Plus at US$4.99/month (NT$165) is the one that makes sense purely on value: it’s a permanent price cut, not a sale, and the 400GB storage bump means you’re also solving a Google Drive problem, not just an AI problem. I wouldn’t jump to Pro or Ultra unless you already know you’re blowing through the 5-hour compute refill regularly — that’s a real signal, not a guess.

🌙 PIMI, the performance-minded cat

Here’s what actually matters to me: the model announced this week, Gemini 4 Argon, is not what free users — or even AI Plus and Pro subscribers, based on what’s published — are confirmed to be running. The page still shows Gemini 3.6 Flash on the free tier, and the footnote says Pro-level access “may change,” which is Google’s way of saying don’t count on it. For raw capability chasers, that matters more than the subscription price. Paying more doesn’t currently guarantee you Argon — it guarantees you more usage headroom and priority access language on the Ultra tiers, which read as “first in line” rather than “exclusive model access” in the data we have. If performance and access to the newest model is your priority, the honest move right now is to wait for Google to confirm which tier actually ships Argon, rather than upgrading on the assumption that a higher price tier equals the newest model. That said, if you’re already hitting the 5-hour compute wall on Deep Research or image generation — workloads that eat quota fast — AI Pro’s 4x usage multiplier and 2TB storage are concrete, verified gains today, independent of which model version you’re served. Ultra’s 5x and 20x multipliers are a usage play, not a “newest model first” guarantee, based on everything published so far.

Verdict: who should use it, who should skip it

If you’re a casual or even moderately heavy chat user, stay on free — nothing about the Argon launch changed its price or its generous feature list, and the compute-based quota with its 5-hour reset is forgiving for normal use. If storage is your actual bottleneck, AI Plus at US$4.99/month (NT$165) is a genuine, permanent deal, not a promotional trap. Skip Pro and Ultra unless you have a documented reason — heavy Deep Research, frequent image generation, or a confirmed need for Argon once Google clarifies where it’s rolling out. Nobody should upgrade right now specifically to “get Argon,” because the data doesn’t show any tier currently guaranteeing that access.

Written: 2026-10-02 Price last verified: 2026-09-24 Tool last health-checked: 2026-10-02

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📎 Sources

All prices and quotas in this article come from AMPM’s verified dataset for Gemini (last verified 2026-09-24); primary sources:

• https://gemini.google.com

🐾 Meet the cats: AMO and PIMI

AMPM is a Taiwan-based AI-tool pricing watchdog. Our motto: ask before you subscribe. Two cats argue every tool from two sides:

• ☀️ AMO — the budget-minded cat. Always asks: is the free tier enough, and is paying actually worth it?
• 🌙 PIMI — the performance-minded cat. Cares about whether it works well, fast, and gets your job done.

When they are done arguing, you know whether to pay. Every number is checked by us, with the verification date at the end.

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