Google pulls Gemini Pro from free accounts and its $4.99 AI Plus plan

On 6 October, a free Gemini user could open the model picker and still choose Flash-Lite, Flash or Pro, The Verge reported ^[1]. Google had already rewritten its Gemini Apps Help page in the first days of the month, and 9to5Google reported the change on 3 October ^[2]. For at least three days, the help page and the picker said different things ^[1][2]. The removal started on 9 October ^[3][22].

The same day as The Verge's report, Google launched Nano Banana 2.1, an image model built on Gemini 3.6 Flash ^[12]. On the Gemini API, a 1K image from it costs $0.0336, against $0.067 for Nano Banana 2, roughly half ^[13][21]. Input went the other way. It tripled to $1.50 per million tokens from $0.50, and there is no free tier ^[14][21].

The person the app change hits hardest is the subscriber who paid $4.99 a month for AI Plus and used Pro on it ^[7][4]. At the US prices 9to5Google reported, the cheapest plan that keeps Pro is now AI Pro at $19.99 ^[5][7], about four times the price ^[18]. AI Pro carries four times the standard usage limit and AI Plus twice it ^[15]. Moving up doubles the allowance for four times the money ^[20]. Pro is also on Google's list of features that use up the limit faster, with Deep Research, extended thinking and Deep Think ^[10].

Higher effort spends the same allowance. Of the new levels, Google's help page says: "This will increase the model's ability to complete tasks and provide more thorough answers to queries, but will also use more of your limit." ^[16]

If a team's setup was free seats for drafting with Pro on hand for the hard cases, that setup ended on 9 October ^[3][22]. The reporting covers personal accounts and the AI Plus, AI Pro and AI Ultra plans, and it includes no usage figures or side-by-side test of Flash-Lite against Pro. The evidence a team has is its own record of who used Pro and who ran into the five-hour reset ^[9].

Two tests sort each seat. The first is whether a week of that person's real prompts holds up on Flash-Lite or Flash. The second is whether they hit the five-hour limit or the weekly cap ^[9]. The answers put each seat in one of four boxes:

- Flash-level work, under the limit: a free account if Flash-Lite holds up, AI Plus at $4.99 if the work needs Flash ^[4][7]. - Flash-level work, over the limit: AI Plus, with twice the standard allowance ^[15]. - Pro-level work, light use: AI Pro at $19.99 is the only fit below Ultra ^[5][7]. - Pro-level work, heavy use: AI Pro's four-times allowance drains faster on Pro and on higher effort ^[10][16], and the next plan up is AI Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99 ^[7].