Overview
- Starting Friday, Oct. 9, Google will restrict personal free Gemini accounts to the single Flash‑Lite model and remove access to Gemini Flash and Gemini Pro.
- Paid tiers are being reshuffled: AI Plus ($4.99/month) will keep Flash‑Lite and Flash but lose Pro, AI Pro ($19.99/month) will include Pro and gain the Deep Think reasoning option, and AI Ultra (from $99.99/month) will retain the full feature set.
- Google will add effort settings (low, medium, high) that change how much of a user’s usage allowance each response consumes, with higher effort producing more thorough answers but using more quota.
- AI Plus subscribers will receive emails explaining their individual rollout timing and loss of Pro access, and Google says managed Google Workspace, enterprise accounts, and API users are not affected.
- The change builds on Google’s earlier 2026 shift to compute‑based billing and could push people who rely on higher‑capability models to test workflows and consider paid plans because exact usage‑limit math has not been publicly detailed.