You can do more with Gemini if you pay for an AI plan.
Credit: Google
Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news.
Before now, Google has been somewhat vague about just how many prompts, pictures, and videos you can get through with its Gemini AI, and the level of quality and AI model you can expect: The end results can vary depending on the Google AI plan you’re on, and the tool you’re using, with imprecise phrasing like “higher limits” and “highest limits” used in the official documentation.
Thankfully, Google has finally gotten around to giving us some clarity, as spotted by the team at 9to5Google. The new figures should give you a better idea of whether or not it’s worth upgrading the plan you’re currently on, and it means you won’t be caught by surprise quite so much when you reach your daily limits.
The limits of Gemini
You can get the official lowdown on the limits of Google AI by heading to the Gemini support page. There are three plans to know about: The free tier (you don’t pay anything), the Google AI Pro tier ($20 a month), and the Google AI Ultra tier ($250 a month). The basics are as follows, though it doesn’t quite cover everything.
If you’re a free user, you get five prompts a day using the best 2.5 Pro model, after which the 2.5 Flash model kicks in. You also get a context window (reading capacity) of 32 thousand tokens, up to five Deep Research reports a month (using 2.5 Flash), up to 20 audio overviews a day, and up to 100 images a day. There are no Deep Think or AI video generation options.
If you’re on the Google AI Pro plan, you get pushed up to 100 prompts per day using 2.5 Pro. The context window grows to 1 million tokens, and you can run up to 20 Deep Research reports a day (using 2.5 Pro). The other limits are up to 20 audio overviews a day, up to 1,000 images a day, and up to three videos a day using the slightly inferior Veo 3 Fast. You can schedule up to 10 active actions, but there’s no access to Deep Think.
Finally, there’s the top Google AI Ultra tier. This gives you up to 500 prompts per day with 2.5 Pro, the same 1 million token context window as the AI Pro plan, and the same 20 audio overviews per day. You can run up to 200 Deep Research reports a day (with 2.5 Pro), and up to 10 Deep Think prompts per day. The 1,000 images-per-day limit is the same as the AI Pro plan, but you can also generate up to five videos per day with the slightly superior Veo 3 model.
What do you think so far?
Credit: Google
What to consider
You might think all those figures are complicated enough, but they don’t quite cover everything. If you use other tools besides the Gemini app, other limits apply. The Flow movie-making web app, for example, works differently: It’s exclusively for Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers, who get 1,000 monthly AI credits and 25,000 monthly AI credits respectively, to put towards their creations.
Another tool that’s affected is NotebookLM, because if you’re subscribed to one of the Google AI plans, you get higher usage limits and access to more features here as well. You can create more notebooks, add more sources, and work with longer documents if you upgrade from the free plan.
Then you’ve got the new features that are added over time, which are sometimes paywalled. The Canvas feature (a more expansive working area) was rolled out to everyone at the same time, for example, whereas the Gems feature (custom chatbots) was originally only for paying subscribers.
Eventually, most features trickle down to become available to everyone, but it’s something else to bear in mind if you’re wondering whether a Google AI Pro or Google AI Ultra plan is worth the investment. Google is obviously going to want to push users towards subscribing with a number of exclusives, but many will be able to get by on the free plan.
