Google to downgrading Gemini for free, AI Plus users

Google is pulling its newer Gemini models away from the people who pay least for them. From October 9, free users and AI Plus subscribers will lose access to models they use today.

Google outlined the changes on a recently updated support page, which 9to5Google flagged first.

Users without a Google AI subscription will be limited to a single Flash-Lite model. They will no longer be able to reach the newer Flash variants that are currently open to them.

The squeeze comes as Google keeps shipping lightweight updates at a near-monthly pace, most recently Gemini 3.8 Flash in September.

The AI Plus tier costing $4.99 per month also feels the blow more strongly, allowing only access to Flash and Flash-Lite models, without Gemini 3.1 Pro and newer reasoning models.

In other words, subscribing for a tier does not provide guaranteed access to Google’s top reasoning model anymore.

Neither Google AI Pro nor Ultra tiers receive any reduction in quotas and maintain their previous benefits. Moreover, both tiers get a Deep Thinking feature.

What is more important is that Google announced that users will have an option to choose from low, medium, and high effort of models, meaning that the higher effort reduces quotas faster. Therefore, this is a compromise between the quality of the answer and the lifetime of a quota.

It is the most recent update of the quota limitations introduced by Google in relation to Gemini.