Google is taking Gemini Pro away from lower priced plans

Google plans to restrict access to several Gemini models for free users and subscribers to its AI Plus plan, beginning October 9. Abner Li reports for 9to5Google that people using the Gemini app without a paid Google AI plan will only be able to use Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. They will lose access to Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 3.1 Pro.

AI Plus subscribers, who pay $4.99 per month, will retain access to Flash-Lite and Flash. However, Google will remove Pro from that plan as well. According to the updated support documentation cited by 9to5Google, affected AI Plus customers will receive an email explaining when the change applies to their accounts.

What each Gemini plan will include

• No plan: Flash-Lite only
• AI Plus: Flash-Lite and Flash
• AI Pro: Flash-Lite, Flash, and Pro
• AI Ultra: Flash-Lite, Flash, and Pro

Google is not reducing the listed model access for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers. Instead, AI Pro customers, who pay $19.99 per month, are expected to gain access to Deep Think. This option is designed for more extensive parallel reasoning and is currently available only on Google’s higher priced plans.

The Gemini app is also expected to add low, medium, and high effort settings for each available model during October. Higher effort settings should produce more detailed work on difficult tasks, but they will consume more of a user’s usage allowance.

Google has not yet clarified where Gemini 4 Argon will sit in the product lineup. The company has said the model will initially reach AI Ultra subscribers, but has not specified whether it belongs to the Pro category or a separate, higher tier.