Gemini 4 Argon beats Claude Opus 5.5 in a 3D animation test for less than a quarter of the cost

Google’s latest frontier model has arrived with a party trick. In a side-by-side comparison, Gemini 4 Argon produced a detailed 3D animation of a Tesla-style electric motor for less than a quarter of what Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 cost on the same task.

The comparison was shared publicly by AI researcher Rubens Soto. It lands just weeks after Anthropic shipped Opus 5.5, which makes the timing about as subtle as a billboard across the street from a competitor’s store.

What Argon actually built

The test asked each model to generate an animation of a permanent-magnet AC electric motor styled after Tesla’s designs. Argon’s output ran 40 seconds and showed the motor’s assembly in detail, with no branding attached.

The animation contained 1,200 frames rendered at full HD resolution, 1920×1080. That works out to 30 frames per second, which is roughly the cadence of standard video.

The cost gap is where things get interesting. On list prices alone, Argon runs at half of Opus 5.5’s rate. Getting to less than a quarter of the cost means the remaining difference would have to come from how many tokens each model consumed on the job.

Here are the numbers. Argon starts at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached inputs priced at $0.10 per million tokens. Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens.

Google’s most capable model to date

Google launched Gemini 4 Argon on October 13, 2026. It is positioned as Google DeepMind’s most advanced model, with strengths in coding, spatial reasoning, physics simulations and multi-step tool use.

Argon can handle up to 1 million tokens of context. Access is broad from day one. The model is available through Google’s API, Google AI Studio, Antigravity and the Gemini app for Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Argon has also posted strong benchmark results. It scored 68.9% on the Vals Index and 77.9% on DeepSWE v1.1, results that placed it at the top of those rankings in coding and economic impact tasks.

The rivalry in context

Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 on September 22, 2026. Argon followed three weeks later.

Both models are aimed at the same high-value target: long-running agentic coding and knowledge work. Agentic, in this context, means AI that carries out extended chains of tasks with limited hand-holding, rather than answering one prompt and stopping.

Google has priced Argon at exactly half of Opus 5.5 on both input and output.