Last updated: 2026-11-02
What changed
Gemini is Google's family of multimodal AI models and the assistant app built on them, sold as a free app, four paid Google AI plans, Gemini Enterprise seats and a pay-per-token API. The app runs on the web, phones, Windows and macOS, and its Customize menu connects more than 40 outside apps to one conversation.
About Gemini
Gemini is the name for Google's multimodal AI models and for the assistant app Google builds on top of them. It replaced Bard in December 2023 and now runs across the Gemini app, Google Search, Workspace apps such as Gmail and Docs, Android, desktop apps for Windows and macOS, and a developer API. Google DeepMind builds the models; the Google DeepMind company page covers the lab and the Google page covers the parent.
The model line moves fast. On Google's plans page the free app lists a Flash-Lite model, Google AI Plus adds the Flash model, and Google AI Pro and Ultra add the Pro model plus Gemini 4 Argon, which can write up to 1 million tokens of output in one run. On the API side, requests sent to Gemini 3.5 Flash are now routed to Gemini 3.6 Flash, and Gemini 3.8 Flash is the newest Flash model; both carry an introductory price that runs to the end of 2026. Gemini 3.1 Pro is still sold as a paid preview.
For individuals the product is a ladder of plans: a free tier, Google AI Plus, Google AI Pro, and Google AI Ultra at two usage levels. The paid plans bundle Google Flow credits for video, storage, and Gemini inside Gmail, Docs and Vids; Pro and Ultra also add the Antigravity coding platform and Chrome auto browse. Developers get a separate pay-per-token API through Google AI Studio, with a free tier for experiments and a paid tier that Google says does not use content to improve its products. Teams buy Gemini Enterprise instead, priced per seat. Agents built on the same models include Gemini CLI, Jules and Gemini Spark, and research workflows can also run through NotebookLM for source-grounded notes.
Gemini runs on the web, iOS and Android, and Google's release notes describe desktop apps on Windows and macOS, with Antigravity built into the Mac app so a coding agent can work in the background while you keep chatting. A Customize menu lets users add skills and connect outside services such as Instacart, OpenTable and Adobe to a single conversation. Google's open-weight Gemma 4 models cover local deployment for people who want to run something on their own hardware.
Where the alternatives win: if you spend your day outside Google's apps, the plan bundles matter less, and ChatGPT may fit better for general work, as may Claude for long documents or Perplexity for cited web answers. Microsoft Copilot is the closer match for teams on Microsoft 365. Google does not publish a message count for any plan, so heavy users cannot compute their ceiling before they pay. The API's model names also change quickly, so production teams should pin versions and re-read the pricing page before committing. For a wider comparison of assistants, see the best AI chatbots guide, and for a plain-language overview, what Gemini is for.
Pricing
Free: $0 in the Gemini app and in Google AI Studio. Google AI Plus $4.99/month (2x Free usage, 200 Google Flow Credits, 400 GB). Google AI Pro $19.99/month (4x Free usage, 1,000 Flow Credits, 5 TB).
Google AI Ultra $99.99/month (5x Pro usage) or $199.99/month (20x Pro usage), storage from 20 TB. Extra AI credits can be bought when a plan's limit runs out. Gemini Enterprise: $21 per seat per month for Business, $30 for Standard and Plus.
API, per million tokens on the paid tier: Gemini 4 Argon $2 input and $10 output through November 30, 2026, then $4 and $20; Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.6 Flash $0.75 and $3.75 each through December 31, 2026, then $1.50 and $7.50; Gemini Omni Flash $1.50/$9 for text output; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview $2/$12 up to 200K-token prompts; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $0.30/$2.50; Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite $0.25/$1.50; Gemini 3 Flash Preview $0.50/$3; Gemini 2.5 Pro $1.25/$10; Gemini 2.5 Flash $0.30/$2.50; Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite $0.10/$0.40. Argon, Omni Flash and 3.1 Pro Preview have no free API tier. Search grounding gives 5,000 free requests a month across Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000.
Batch is half the standard rate. Source: Google's Gemini plans page and Gemini API pricing page, both read on 2 November 2026. For a tier-by-tier comparison, read the ChatGPT pricing notes first, then check the Claude ones against them.
| Tier | Monthly price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free (Gemini app and Google AI Studio) | Free | Gemini app chat on a Flash-Lite model, image generation and editing, Deep Research, limited Google Flow access, 15 GB storage |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite (API) | $3/mo | Cheapest listed rate; free tier offered; batch halves it |
| Google AI Plus | $4.99/mo | 2x Free usage limits, Flash model, video generation, 200 Google Flow Credits, Gemini in Gmail and Vids, 400 GB storage |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (API) | $7.50/mo | Metered per token with a free tier; batch at half rate |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash (API) | $9/mo | Per-token billing, free tier on offer, half-price batch |
| Gemini 3 Flash Preview (API) | $18/mo | Preview model; free tier exists; batch is cheaper |
| Google AI Pro (Personal) | $19.99/mo | 4x Free usage limits, Gemini 4 Argon and the Pro model, 1,000 Google Flow Credits, Antigravity entry limits, Gemini in Gmail and Docs, Chrome auto browse, Google Home Premium Standard, YouTube Premium Lite, 5 TB storage |
| Gemini Enterprise Business | $21/mo | Gemini Enterprise app for small teams, no IT setup, starting price per user slot |
| Gemini Enterprise Standard/Plus | $30/mo | Everything in Business plus enterprise IT controls, higher quotas, unlimited slots and third-party agents; contact sales |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro (API) | $37.50/mo | Rates double above 200K prompt tokens; batch discount |
| Gemini Omni Flash (API) | $45/mo | Paid tier only; text output rate shown, video output metered separately |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview (API) | $60/mo | Paid tier only; $4 input and $18 output per million tokens for prompts over 200K; batch discount |
| Google AI Ultra 5x | $99.99/mo | 5x Pro usage limits, highest Gemini 4 Argon access, 10,000 or 25,000 Google Flow Credits, Project Genie, Google Home Premium Advanced, YouTube Premium individual plan in supported countries, storage from 20 TB |
| Google AI Ultra 20x | $199.99/mo | 20x Pro usage limits, top Antigravity rate limits, Flow Credits, the most Gemini 4 Argon use of any plan, storage from 20 TB |
| Gemini 4 Argon (API) | Custom | Paid tier only; $4 input, $20 output and $0.20 cached from December 1, 2026 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash (API) | Custom | Introductory rate through December 31, 2026; $1.50 input, $7.50 output and $0.15 cached from January 1, 2027; batch and flex half the standard rate |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash (API) | Custom | Shares the 3.8 Flash launch price until the end of 2026, then moves to $1.50 input and $7.50 output in January 2027; free tier available |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (API) | Custom | Metered per token; free tier exists on the Flash-Lite line |
Feature Comparison by Tier
| Feature | Free Tier | Google AI Pro | Google AI Ultra | Gemini 3.1 Pro API |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Context window | Not published | 1M tokens | 1M tokens | 1,048,576 |
| Gemini 4 Argon | — | ✓ | ✓ Highest access | Separate paid-tier model |
| Multimodal input | Text, images | Text, images, audio, video | Same as Pro | Adds PDFs |
| Google Search AI access | — | Higher access | Highest access | 5,000 free grounded requests a month, then metered |
| Canvas and Gems | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Tasks in Gemini | — | — | First access, select countries | — |
| Google Flow credits | Limited access | 1,000 | 10,000 or 25,000 | — |
| Antigravity access | — | Entry rate limits | Higher or highest rate limits | — |
| Storage | 15 GB | 5 TB | From 20 TB | — |
| Rate limits | Compute-based, 5-hour reset | 4x Free usage | 5x or 20x Pro usage | Per-model rates |
Key Features
- Long-Context Reasoning: Gemini 4 Argon reads up to 1 million input tokens and writes up to 1 million output tokens per run; paid API users and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can use it.
- Native Multimodal Understanding: Unified architecture processing text, images, audio, and video simultaneously without separate tools, with natively multimodal reasoning across all modalities.
- Deep Reasoning and Thinking Levels: Controllable internal reasoning via thinking_level parameter (low/medium/high) for trading latency against response quality and analytical depth.
- Flash Model for Agents and Code: Google's September 2026 developer post describes its newest Flash model as its most capable Flash model for software engineering, agentic tasks and multistep reasoning, available in Google AI Studio.
- Search Grounding in the API: The paid API includes 5,000 free Google Search grounded requests a month shared across Gemini 3.x models, then metered per 1,000 requests.
- Gemma 4 Open-Source Models: Google's Gemma 4 family (released April 2026) includes a 26B parameter MoE model with 256K context window and native vision, freely available for local and cloud deployment.
- Personal Intelligence with Google Photos: Rolled out April 2026: Gemini's Personal Intelligence mode accesses your Google Photos library to answer questions and generate personalized images based on your private photo context, with no complex prompting required.
- Gemini Omni Flash: Gemini Omni Flash takes text, image, video and audio in and can generate video; the 200 to 25,000 monthly Google Flow credits on the paid plans run on it.
- Computer Use and a Gemini API CLI: The Computer Use tool reached general availability on 30 October 2026, three days after Google shipped a beta command-line client for coding agents and CI pipelines.
- Gemini in Sheets: Formula Error Diagnosis and Fix: Rolling out from June 22, 2026: Gemini in Google Sheets can diagnose and correct formula errors, users highlight a broken cell and prompt Gemini to explain the issue and suggest a fix, available to all Google Workspace users with Gemini access.
- Customize and Connected Apps: A Customize menu, rolling out on every tier, lets users add skills and connect more than 40 outside apps, including Instacart and OpenTable, to one conversation.
Pros
- Massive 1M+ token context window processing entire documents and codebases in single requests
- True native multimodality with unified text-image-audio-video understanding without tool-switching
- Superior Google Workspace integration across Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets with permission-respecting access
- Free tier includes Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, Gems and image generation, with no card required
- Paid Gemini API tier does not use prompts or outputs to improve Google products, per Google's pricing page
Cons
- Higher per-token pricing for Pro-tier models compared to budget-tier competitors and open-weight alternatives
- Tight safety guardrails sometimes causing overly conservative outputs or refusals on non-controversial content
- Context understanding and instruction-following inconsistencies requiring multiple attempts for complex prompts
- App limits are compute-based and refresh every five hours up to a weekly cap, so a long chat with heavy features can stop you mid-task
- Output token costs scale up sharply for long-context requests once a prompt crosses the API's context pricing threshold
Product Information
- Cloud
- Yes
- Self-Hosted
- No
- On-Premise
- No
- Languages
- English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Hindi
- Training
- Official documentation (ai.google.dev), Video tutorials and demos, Community Discord and forums, Google Cloud training courses, In-app onboarding and tips
Data Handling
- Training-data policy
- Gemini app chats can be reviewed by humans and used to improve Google AI while Keep Activity is on; turning it off stops future chats being used for improvement, though Google still keeps them briefly to respond and for safety. On the Gemini API, free-tier content is used to improve Google products and paid-tier content is not, per Google's plans page.
- Data retention
- 548 days
- Compliance
- SOC 1/2/3 · ISO 9001 · ISO/IEC 27001 · ISO 27017 · ISO 27018 · ISO 27701 · ISO 42001 · FedRAMP High · HIPAA-eligible · BSI C5
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Gemini cost per month, and how is the API billed?
The app is free. Google AI Plus is $4.99 a month, Google AI Pro $19.99, and Google AI Ultra $99.99 for 5x Pro usage or $199.99 for 20x. The API bills per million tokens by model, with a free tier on most Flash models and batch jobs at half the standard rate. Business teams buy Gemini Enterprise per seat instead, and every rate, with the date it was read, is in the price notes above.
Is the free version of Gemini enough, or will I hit limits?
For light use it often is. The free app includes a Flash-Lite model, image generation, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, Gems and 15 GB of storage. Google weighs prompt complexity, features and chat length against your allowance, so long chats run out sooner. Paid plans raise those limits, add the Pro model and Flow credits, and put Gemini inside Gmail and Docs.
What are the main alternatives to Gemini?
ChatGPT and Claude are the closest general assistants, Perplexity is the nearest rival for cited web answers, and Microsoft Copilot fits teams that work in Microsoft 365. Gemini's own case rests on Gmail, Docs, Drive, Search and Android, so the choice usually follows the office suite you already use.
Should I pick Gemini or ChatGPT?
Pick Gemini when your mail, files and calendar already live in Google Workspace, because Google AI Pro puts the assistant inside Gmail and Docs and adds Chrome auto browse. ChatGPT suits people who want a standalone assistant not tied to one suite. Running the same real task on both free tiers is the cheapest test.
What is new in Gemini since October 2026?
Gemini 4 Argon became generally available on 13 October 2026 for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and for paid API users, at an introductory API rate that doubles on 1 December. Google's notes that day also put Antigravity inside the Mac app, the API retired an older Flash model the same week, and Computer Use reached general availability at the end of October.
Top Alternatives
- ChatGPT: Gemini is built into Google's apps, Search and Android; ChatGPT is the standalone alternative for people who do not live in Google's ecosystem.
- Claude: Gemini bundles Google Photos, Workspace and Search access into its paid plans; Claude is the alternative when you want an assistant independent of Google's apps.
- Perplexity: Native Google Search grounding inside a general assistant is Gemini's approach; a research tool built entirely around cited answers is Perplexity's.
Hokai guides covering Gemini
- Best AI Assistant for Office Work in 2026: Which AI assistant fits an office in 2026? Compare Microsoft 365 Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude Team and email and meeting tools with real seat prices.
- Best AI for Deep Research in 2026: What Each One Can Actually See: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok each ship Deep Research, but they read different data and cap runs differently. Here is how to pick the right one.
- Gemini vs ChatGPT on Android (2026): Can ChatGPT Replace Gemini?: Yes, ChatGPT can replace Gemini as Android's default assistant in Settings, but it loses the wake word and screen reading. Steps, prices and privacy compared.
- The Best Android AI Assistant in 2026, Free and Paid, Now That Google Assistant Is Gone: Gemini is the default Android assistant since Google Assistant's 4 Sep 2026 shutdown. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Meta AI and Claude compared; all start free.
- Gemini Hit a Billion Users. Then Google Shipped a Different One.: Gemini means three things in 2026: Google's billion-user chat app, the Gemini 3.7 Flash API for coding and agents, and Google Labs tools like Opal and Disco.
- Best AI Browsers in 2026: Comet, Chrome, Edge, Dia and Opera Neon Compared: Best AI browsers in 2026 ranked by fit: Comet, Chrome with Gemini, Edge, Dia and Opera Neon, with prices, platforms and prompt-injection defences checked.