Starting October 9, 2026, Google will restrict free Gemini personal accounts to the Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite model. Users will lose access to Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 3.1 Pro, which were previously available on the free plan.
To regain access to the standard Flash model, users must subscribe to the Google AI Plus plan, priced at $4.99 per month. This subscription tier will no longer include the Gemini Pro model.
The company is also adjusting its usage limits across tiers, with Pro access offering up to 4x higher limits than the free version. Google has not yet disclosed the specific methodology for calculating these new usage caps.
The changes apply exclusively to personal accounts. Enterprise, work accounts, and API access for developers remain unaffected by these updates. The Gemini application itself will continue to be free and receive updates.
These adjustments follow previous compute-based changes implemented by Google earlier in 2026. The company aims to differentiate capabilities between pricing tiers and encourage users to upgrade their current plans.
