Google has cut Gemini Pro out of Google AI Plus, the $5-a-month subscription that until last week gave users a higher usage allowance for its best Gemini model alongside 400GB of shared Google One storage.
According to an account published by Android Authority, subscribers began receiving emails last week informing them that AI Plus would no longer include Gemini Pro. From now on, AI Plus accounts are limited to Gemini's Flash and Flash-Lite models, the faster but less capable versions of the chatbot. Google reportedly gave affected users three choices: keep AI Plus at the reduced capability, upgrade to Google AI Pro at $20 a month to regain Gemini Pro along with 5TB of Google One storage, or cancel the subscription outright.
The change also touches Gemini's free tier, which Android Authority says is now restricted to Flash-Lite only. That's a step down from before, and the Android Authority writer who detailed the switch described Flash-Lite as feeling closer to an AI Overview search snippet than a full chatbot, short on follow-up context compared with the Pro model or with free-tier rivals.
What's left on the free tier
Not everything Google-branded took a hit. Gemini Notebook, the renamed NotebookLM, remains available for free. It lets users group documents, PDFs and web links into a single notebook and ask questions that draw only from those uploaded sources, a way to keep the chatbot from pulling in unreliable material from the open web.
That's not quite a replacement for Pro-level conversation, though, which is why the downgrade is pushing at least some paying users toward other chatbots entirely. Android Authority's account describes reinstalling ChatGPT and Claude to fill the gap, both of which offer free tiers that compete with Gemini's reduced Flash-Lite access. ChatGPT's free plan was described as stronger at sustained conversation and image editing, while Claude's free responses came across as terser and required more editing to match a personal writing style, though Claude's free tier carries tighter daily limits and no visible usage counter in its Android app.
The math on paying more
The catch for anyone weighing an upgrade is cost. Both ChatGPT Plus and Claude's paid tier run $20 a month, the same price as Google's own AI Pro plan, which now looks like the more complete deal since it bundles Gemini Pro access with 5TB of storage rather than just a chatbot subscription. For someone who only wanted a cheap bump over Gemini's free tier, that leaves a gap: AI Plus at $5 no longer buys access to Google's better model, and matching it elsewhere means paying four times as much.
Google has not published a broader statement on the change beyond the emails subscribers received, and it's unclear whether the AI Plus pricing or feature set will shift again as the company works out where Gemini Pro sits in its tiering. For now, anyone on the $5 plan who wants Pro back has only one paid route to it.
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