Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 4 Argon
Full profiles: Claude Fable 5.2 (Anthropic) and Gemini 4 Argon (Google): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 10 sources
As of 9 Nov 2026, Claude Fable 5.2 and Gemini 4 Argon are neck and neck on quality (69.4 vs 65.7 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±6.4 margin), and Gemini 4 Argon is 4.0× cheaper at $4.00 vs $16.00 per 1M tokens blended. Claude Fable 5.2 leads in every category we measure both in. Gemini 4 Argon's current price runs until 30 Nov 2026, then $8.00.
Key facts (as of 9 Nov 2026)
- Claude Fable 5.2 scores 69.4 on the BenchLeader Index and Gemini 4 Argon scores 65.7 (BenchLeader, 9 Nov 2026).
- Claude Fable 5.2 costs $16.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 9 Nov 2026).
- Gemini 4 Argon costs $4.00 per 1M tokens blended until 30 Nov 2026, then $8.00 (https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing, checked 20 Oct 2026).
- Of the 23 benchmarks both models have, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 19 (BenchLeader, 9 Nov 2026).
Claude Fable 5.2 benchmarks 
Gemini 4 Argon benchmarks Which to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Fable 5.2 | 80 vs 67 category score; FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) 48.8% vs 25.7% | High |
| Reasoning | Claude Fable 5.2 | 78 vs 70 category score; HLE-Diamond (AA) 80.2% vs 56.7% | High |
| Knowledge | Claude Fable 5.2 | 82 vs 73 category score; AA-Omniscience v1.1 66.8 vs 46.1 | High |
| Long documents | Claude Fable 5.2 | 66 vs 65 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 83.3% vs 79.7% | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Gemini 4 Argon has an Arena rating (72 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | Gemini 4 Argon | $4.00 vs $16.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.160 vs $0.640; from 1 Dec 2026: $8.00 vs $16.00 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Fable 5.2 | 3.0 s (Claude Fable 5.2 (max)) vs 37.2 s (Gemini 4 Argon (high)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Fable 5.2 (max) and Gemini 4 Argon (high) are neck and neck on quality (69.4 vs 65.7, within the ±6.4 margin).
- Claude Fable 5.2 (max) is stronger in coding, knowledge, long context, reasoning.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high) is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, maths.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high) is 4.0× cheaper ($4.00 vs $16.00 per 1M blended) until 30 Nov 2026, then $8.00 vs $16.00 from 1 Dec 2026.
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Fable 5.2 | Gemini 4 Argon |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | |
| Released | 9 Nov 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 |
| Generally available | 9 Nov 2026 | 13 Oct 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Max output (tokens) | – | 65,536 (up to 1,048,576 with long decode) |
| Input types | – | text, image, video, audio, PDF |
| Reasoning effort settings | – | low, medium, high |
| Compared at | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $8.00 / $40.00 / $0.200 | $2.00 / $10.00 / $0.100 |
| Announced price change | None announced | $4.00 / $20.00 / $0.200 from 1 Dec 2026 |
| API model ID | – | gemini-4-argon |
| Where to use it | – | Gemini API (AI Studio), Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini app |
Limits, availability and announced prices from the vendors' own pages: ai.google.dev, ai.google.dev pricing (checked 20 Oct 2026). Everything else is from the day's data.
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 78.4 | 69.9 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
| Coding | 80.2 | 67.1 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
| Agents & tools | – | 57.5 | not comparable |
| Maths | – | 70.0 | not comparable |
| Knowledge | 81.7 | 72.9 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
| Human preference | – | 72.2 | not comparable |
| Long context | 66.4 | 64.5 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
On one chart
Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Agents & tools, Maths, Instruction following, Multimodal, Human preference.
Where sources disagree
Across the 23 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 19, Gemini 4 Argon leads 4. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Fable 5.2 ahead.
| Overall index | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 69.4 | 65.7 | neck and neck |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | 64.6 | 50.4 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
| Vals Index | 71.3† | 69.4 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.
| Measure | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens, until 30 Nov 2026 | $16.00 | $4.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $8.00 / $40.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |
| Blended price per 1M from 1 Dec 2026 | $16.00 | $8.00 |
| Input / output per 1M from 1 Dec 2026 | $8.00 / $40.00 | $4.00 / $20.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.200 | $0.100 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.015 | $0.0038 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.120 | $0.030 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.108 | $0.027 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.640 | $0.160 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.024 | $0.0060 |
| Agentic coding session, input mostly cached | $0.289 | $0.074 |
| Cost per benchmark task (AA Index) | $26.54 | $9.95 |
| Output tokens per task (AA Index) | 274k | 116k |
| Of which reasoning | 193k | 68k |
| Time per task (AA Index) | – | 29 min |
| Output speed | 72 tok/s | 66 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 3.0 s | 37.2 s |
| Time to a complete answer | – | 107.7 s |
Per token is not per task: an average task of Artificial Analysis' Intelligence Index cost $26.54 on Claude Fable 5.2 (max) and $9.95 on Gemini 4 Argon (high), and Claude Fable 5.2 (max) wrote 2.4× as many output tokens for the same work, which a per-token price hides.
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Fable 5.2 (max) scores 69.4 and takes 3 s to its first answer token; Claude Fable 5.2 (high) scores 68.9 in 3 s, Claude Fable 5.2 (xhigh) scores 68.7 in 3 s. Gemini 4 Argon (high) scores 65.7 and takes 37 s to its first answer token; Gemini 4 Argon scores 63.3 in 5 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
122 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 69.4 | 65.7 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 80.2 | 67.1 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 81.7 | 72.9 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 66.4 | 64.5 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 78.4 | 69.9 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 57.5 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 72.2 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | – | 70.0 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $16.00 | $4.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 72 tok/s | 66 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 3.0 s | 37.2 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 96.4% |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1545 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 88.8%† | 95.1%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 74.3% | 57.1% |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 80.2% | 56.7% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 97.5% | 98.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 92.5% | 91.3% |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 94.9% | 97.3% |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 35.4% | 27.1% |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 76.5% | 52.5% |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | 51.8%† | 45.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 59.0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 64.0% |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 63.7% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 97.3% |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 61.8% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | – | 47.5%† |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1553 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1683 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | 79.2%† | 85.7%† |
| SciCode (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 67.7% | 61.8% |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 100.0% |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | – | 68.2% |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | 83.3%† | 70.8% |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 19.0%† | 2.5% |
Show all 122 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | 62.3%† | 56.0% |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | – | 21.2% |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 93.8%† | 91.9% |
| MirrorCode | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 58.9% |
| CursorBench | Cursor | – | 52.9% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 2100.1 |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 55.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 59.6% | 57.1% |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | – | 71.0%† |
| GameBench 2 Overall | DuelLab GameBench 2 | – | 81.7† |
| GameBench 2 by reasoning setting | DuelLab GameBench 2 | – | 89.0 |
| Design Arena Website | Design Arena | – | 1315† |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 56.2% | 43.5% |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 48.8% | 25.7% |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | – | 17.1%† |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | – | 82.4%† |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | 10.8 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | 82.9%† | 58.5%† |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | 86.9%† | 82.8%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 57.7% |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | – | 90.7%† |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 62.0%† |
| GDPval-AA v2.1, normalised score | Artificial Analysis | – | 56.2% |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1831 | 1631 |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 48.8% |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | – | 4.8% |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 77.9% |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | – | 65.4% |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | 69.5%† | 67.7% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 5.0%† | 27.1% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | – | 19.6% |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 46.1%† | 54.8% |
| Robo-bench | Vals AI | – | 0.8% |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 44.3% |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 32.1%† | 49.2% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 65.2%† | 57.6% |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 55.7%† | 44.3% |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | – | 52.5% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | – | 13718.2† |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 76.4% | 77.5% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 24.2% | 21.8% |
| Harvey LAB-AA v1.1 | Harvey | 7.2% | 3.9% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1785 | 1485 |
| GDPx | GDPx by SemiAnalysis | – | 7.3% |
| Design Arena Agentic | Design Arena | – | 1280† |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 73.3% | 52.9% |
| FACTS Search | – | 89.9%† | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 86.0% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 78.0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 100.0% |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | – | 99.0%† |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1528 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 76.0% |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 81.5%† | 85.2%† |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | 94.5%† | 86.8%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 66.8 | 46.1 |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | – | 88.3% |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | – | 49.9%† |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | – | 49.4%† |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | 83.7%† | 76.3% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | – | 75.2% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 77.4%† | 74.8% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | – | 58.8% |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | – | 87.4% |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 69.8% |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 65.4% |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 64.8% |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 28.4% |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 79.1% | 48.3% |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 40.7% | 95.7% |
| HealthBench Professional (AA) | OpenAI | 67.7% | 55.0% |
| Instruction following | |||
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | – | 78.7%† |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1527 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1522 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | – | 1236† |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1526 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1544 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1542 |
| Multimodal | |||
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | 85.1%† | 69.2%† |
| SAGE | Vals AI | – | 89.5% |
| AudioMC | Scale AI SEAL | – | 58.4% |
| AudioMC (text output) | Scale AI SEAL | – | 58.4% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 54.5%† |
| Code2Video-AA | Artificial Analysis | – | 1259 |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | 1271 | 1147 |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 83.3% | 79.7% |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 13.9% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 166.4† |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | 84.9%† | 77.7%† |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | 64.6 | 50.4 |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | – | 52.6 |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 341.8 |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | 71.3† | 69.4 |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | 63.6%† | 66.0% |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | – | 30.6% |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | 63.7%† | 55.4% |
| Vals Router Index | Vals AI | – | 69.2%† |
Data as of 2026-11-09. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
DuelLab GameBench 2, release gb2-20261103-eaea31df94e6 (https://benchmarks.duellab.org/releases/gb2-20261103-eaea31df94e6/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Scores mapped to BenchLeader model names; not endorsed by DuelLab.
What changed
- Gemini 4 Argon: list price moves to $4.00 / $20.00 per 1M input / output tokens (announced).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 4 score revisions.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 1 score revision.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): cost per task moved from $7.68/M to $9.95/M (29% up).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 1 score revision.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 2 score revisions; input price moved from $2.00/M to $4.00/M (100% up); output price moved from $10.00/M to $20.00/M (100% up); cost per task moved from $3.84/M to $7.68/M (100% up).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): BenchLeader Index 66.8 → 65.9.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 5 new results (AA Intelligence Index v5.0, AA Progress Index v1, HLE-Diamond (AA)…); 5 score revisions; cost per task moved from $1.62/M to $3.84/M (137% up).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): BenchLeader Index 68.5 → 66.8.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 1 new result (Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)).
Related comparisons
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs GPT-6 Astra
- Gemini 4 Argon vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 4 Argon vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Gemini 4 Argon vs GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 4 Argon: questions
- Is Claude Fable 5.2 better than Gemini 4 Argon?
- Claude Fable 5.2 (max) and Gemini 4 Argon (high) are neck and neck on quality (69.4 vs 65.7, within the ±6.4 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 9 Nov 2026, so check the category scores for your use.
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 4 Argon: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Gemini 4 Argon is cheaper today: $4.00 against $16.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. Gemini 4 Argon's current price runs until 30 Nov 2026, then $8.00.
- Is Claude Fable 5.2 or Gemini 4 Argon better for coding?
- Claude Fable 5.2 scores higher in coding (80 vs 67 on the category index, where 50 is average). On FrontierCode 2.0 (AA), the top shared coding benchmark, it is 48.8% for Claude Fable 5.2 against 25.7% for Gemini 4 Argon.
- Which is faster, Claude Fable 5.2 or Gemini 4 Argon?
- Claude Fable 5.2 streams faster (72 vs 66 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Claude Fable 5.2 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (66 vs 65). Both take about 1M tokens: Claude Fable 5.2 1,000,000, Gemini 4 Argon 1,048,576.
More questions (3)
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Fable 5.2 answers first: 3.0 s against 37.2 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 4 Argon?
- Across the 23 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 19, Gemini 4 Argon leads 4. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Fable 5.2 ahead.
- When was Claude Fable 5.2 released?
- Claude Fable 5.2 was released on 9 Nov 2026.