The reversible logic has been gaining increased attention due to its characteristic feature of incurring low-power dissipation in digital circuits. It plays a major role in quantum computing. This paper suggests a novel 4 * 4 reversible gate called BKAS gate. One of the most interesting characteristic features of BKAS is that it can be functioned individually as a reversible full adder, as well as a full subtractor. This feature allows it to be used in the design of complex adder architectures with reduced garbage outputs, quantum cost, and ancilla input. The proposed BKAS gate is validated using a comparison with the prevailing reversible gates in the literature. © 2018, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.