Gemini free model access changes on October 9. Google limits personal accounts without an AI plan to a single model, Flash-Lite. Its Gemini Apps Help page says those users lose both Flash and Pro.
However, the change reaches paying customers too, and not all of them on the same day. Here is who loses what, according to Google’s own table.
Who loses which Gemini model
Google’s table splits access by plan. Without a plan, you keep Flash-Lite only. Google AI Plus keeps Flash-Lite and Flash but loses Pro. AI Pro and AI Ultra keep all three models.
The page says the changes apply to Gemini Apps “when you use a personal account.” They take effect for users without a subscription on October 9. Meanwhile, AI Plus subscribers will get an email explaining when the change reaches them, so their date may differ.
What each plan costs
Google’s US plan page lists AI Plus at $4.99 a month and AI Pro at $19.99 a month. AI Ultra starts at $99.99 a month. Google also lists usage limits of 2x the free tier for Plus and 4x for Pro. By comparison, the top Ultra tier gets up to 20x the Pro limits.
Tech My Money covered the plan’s earlier drop to $4.99 with 400GB of storage. Therefore, anyone who bought Plus for Pro access is the most exposed group here.
Effort levels and Deep Think
Google is also adding an effort setting. For each available model you can choose low, medium or high. Higher levels give more thorough answers. However, they use more of your limit. AI Ultra subscribers also get the Deep Think option for maximum parallel reasoning.
Premium models and features require more usage and may cause you to reach your limit faster.
Google, Gemini Apps Help
That limit already works differently from a plain message count. For example, since May 17, Google has used compute-based limits that refresh every five hours until you reach a weekly cap. The cost of a prompt depends on its complexity, the features it uses and the chat’s length.
Google has not said how many prompts the free tier allows on Flash-Lite. Readers following Google’s newest model can see our report on Gemini 4 Argon.
