Is Gemini free? Yes, on Flash-Lite with a weekly cap, and the API has a free tier too

Is Gemini free to use? Yes, mostly on Flash-Lite

You can use the Gemini app for nothing. Google's subscriptions page lists the Free plan at "$0/month with a Google Account", and it includes image generation, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas and Gems. What changed is the model you get. Since 9 October 2026 an account without a plan runs on Auto, and Google's model access page says "Most prompts will go to Flash-Lite, our fastest model." The harder ones may go to Flash or Pro. You don't get to pick.

All of the plans sit on the same meter. Google's limits page puts it this way: "Your limit refreshes every 5 hours until you reach your weekly limit." Plus doubles the free allowance, and Pro gives you four times that. Ultra comes in two tiers, 5x and 20x AI Pro, so the $199.99 tier is 80 times what a free account gets. Google won't say how many prompts there are in the free allowance.

Here's what each personal plan gets, from Google's subscriptions and limits pages read on 12 October 2026, at US prices:

What does free Gemini leave out?

Free Gemini leaves out video generation in the app, and it leaves out five more features as well. Google's limits page marks Daily brief, Scheduled actions and redoing images with Nano Banana Pro as starting on AI Plus. Gemini Spark starts on AI Pro. If you want early access to new features, that's for the paying plans too.

The context window matters more than any of those for most of us. A free account can read 32k tokens at once, against 128k on Plus and 1 million on Pro and Ultra. Google's own ratio is that "with a 1M token context window, Gemini can understand up to 1,500 pages of text", which puts the free window near 48 pages. So a long PDF won't fit in it.

Free accounts are also the first in line when Google runs short of capacity. The limits page says "limits for users without a Google AI plan may be limited before users with a plan." It adds that compute heavy features "like Deep Research, may be unavailable during periods of high demand" for them. A paid account that hits its wall can keep chatting on Flash-Lite. A free one can only wait it out.

Is Gemini Pro free?

Gemini Pro isn't free to choose. Since 9 October 2026, Google's model access table shows a free account on Auto with no model picker, and Auto reaches Pro only for "Prompts that need deeper reasoning". Turn smart model selection off and Google says free chats "will use Flash-Lite for all responses." So you'll see Pro on a free account some of the time, but it's Google that makes the call.

Google's own pages don't agree yet. The limits page, read the same day, still marks Gemini 3 Pro "Yes" for an account without a plan, and the plans page still lists 3.1 Pro on AI Plus. The newer model access page carries the October change: no plan gets Auto, and AI Plus keeps Flash-Lite and Flash but loses Pro, on a date Google emails to each Plus subscriber. We trust the dated page. If Pro is why you'd pay, AI Pro at $19.99 is the cheapest plan that lists it on all three pages.

There are three ways to get Google AI Pro, and the Pro model with it, at no cost for a while:

• US college students get a year of Google AI Pro free if they redeem by 31 December 2026, per Google's 19 August 2026 offer. Students in over 140 other markets get a year of Google AI Plus.
• Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL and Pro Fold buyers get a 6 month Google AI Pro trial, redeemable until 31 October 2027, per Google's Pixel offers page. The Pixel 10 Pro offer, a 12 month trial, had a 31 October 2026 deadline.
• Reliance Jio customers in India on Unlimited 5G plans were offered 18 months of Google AI Pro from 30 October 2025, per Google's India announcement. It opened to users aged 18 to 25 first, and Jio dropped the age limit on 10 November 2025, the Free Press Journal reported.

The student and Pixel offers both want a payment method at sign up, and both bill $19.99 a month once the free stretch ends unless you cancel first. Jio's runs only while you stay on an Unlimited 5G plan, per Business Today, so check the MyJio app for what's still open.

What are Gemini's free limits per day?

Free Gemini isn't unlimited, and Google publishes no daily prompt count for it. Since 17 May 2026 the app has used compute based limits that count "the complexity of your prompt, the models and features you use, and the length of your chat". One long chat with Deep Research in it can spend what twenty short questions would.

It used to be a number you could plan around. In September 2025 Google's help page listed 5 Gemini 2.5 Pro prompts a day for free accounts, 100 on AI Pro and 500 on Ultra, as Gigazine recorded on 8 September 2025. The same table gave free accounts 5 Deep Research reports a month. None of those counts are on Google's pages today.

Two free limits do come with numbers. Google Flow, Google's video studio, gives every account 50 credits a day, and its credits page prices a Veo 3.1 Lite clip at 10 credits outside Ultra. That's five Lite clips a day, and unused credits don't roll over. The free context window is 32k tokens.

To see what's left, open Settings at the bottom left of gemini.google.com and choose Usage Limits. When the bar runs out, Gemini usage limit reached explains which of Google's limits stopped you and when each one resets.

Is the Gemini API free? Yes, on a free tier in Google AI Studio

The Gemini API has a free tier, and it's more generous on models than the free app. Google's API pricing page, updated 9 October 2026, marks the newest Flash, Flash-Lite and the older 2.5 Pro as "Free of charge" for both input and output. It also says "Google AI Studio usage is free of charge in all available regions."

The free tier costs you something else: your data. Google's pricing page lists "Content used to improve our products" as a feature of the free plan, and "not" used on the paid one, so don't send client data through a free key. And the newest Pro model isn't on the free tier at all, as the table shows.

Limits are the other cost. Google's rate limits page shows the free tier's caps inside AI Studio rather than in the docs, and "Requests per day (RPD) quotas reset at midnight Pacific time." Linking a billing account moves a project to Tier 1. Tier 2 follows after $100 of spend and 3 days.

When is paying for Gemini worth it?

Pay when the free plan stops you, and not before that. Google AI Plus at $4.99 is the cheapest way to get video in the app, a 128k window and 400 GB of storage. Google AI Pro at $19.99 is mostly a storage plan with 4x the chat, and Is Google AI Pro worth it works through when the 5 TB pays for it. Ultra is for people who make a lot of video or want Deep Think.

Whizi, which publishes this page, is a different trade. Its free account is smaller than Gemini's: 10 messages a day, on Whizi AI, Auto and Claude Haiku 5.5 only. Gemini models start on Whizi's Pro plan at $29.99 a month, where a Gemini Pro answer costs 10 of 2,500 monthly credits, next to Claude Opus and ChatGPT Sol in one chat (Gemini in Whizi). For Gemini alone, Google's free app wins on price. There's no storage, no Veo video and no Gemini in Gmail on Whizi.