Google cut which Gemini models a personal account can use, under the change its own support page describes as “changes to Gemini model access and limits.” The cut reached everyone without a paid plan on October 9, 2026, as scheduled; Google says AI Plus subscribers will still get a separate email naming their own effective date, which hasn’t been published yet.
Who Kept Which Model After October 9
- Without a plan (free): Flash-Lite only now. Both Flash and Pro are gone.
- AI Plus: Flash-Lite and Flash stay, but Pro access has ended for this tier too, once Google’s email reaches each account.
- AI Pro and AI Ultra: keep all three models unchanged, plus the Deep Think option for “maximum parallel reasoning.”
- Every plan can now set a model’s effort level to low, medium or high; a higher setting answers more thoroughly but spends more of a weekly quota. That quota is compute-based and refreshes every five hours until the weekly limit resets — standard for free accounts, 2x for AI Plus, 4x for AI Pro, and 5x or 20x of AI Pro’s limit for AI Ultra, depending on the tier.
- The change applies only to personal Google accounts, not Google Workspace business accounts, and follows a similar model and usage-limit change Google made for adult accounts on May 17, 2026.
What To Check Now That Free Lost Pro
- If staff use the free Gemini app to draft customer replies, summarize chat threads or translate messages, test those same tasks on Flash-Lite now and confirm answer quality still holds up — Flash and Pro are no longer available to fall back on.
- Already paying for AI Plus specifically to reach the Pro model for harder reasoning work? Watch your inbox for Google’s email naming your account’s cutoff date, then weigh upgrading to AI Pro against simply adjusting the workflow to Flash’s lighter output.
- This only touches a general-purpose assistant. It doesn’t affect a support AI trained on a business’s own knowledge base, like 1CS’s AI Agents, which runs independently of these consumer plan tiers.
Google made a similar change to its Gemini Skills feature earlier this month — another case of a Gemini app update landing for personal accounts first.
