Gemini

Gemini is Google's AI assistant: you ask it questions, have it write or summarize for you, generate images and dig into a topic with its research tools. Is Gemini free? Yes. You can even ask it something without an account, though you only get the lightest model that way, and a free Google Account gets you the rest of the free plan. Paying means a Google AI plan: Plus at $4.99 a month, Pro at $19.99, or Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99. And Gemini 4 Argon is now in the app, but only on Pro and Ultra.

That's the short answer. Here's what Gemini did when I used it without signing in, what each plan adds, and what Google has actually said about Gemini 4.

What Gemini is, and what you get without an account

Gemini lives at gemini.google.com and in the mobile app, and it's the same assistant Google is building into Gmail, Docs and the rest of its apps. The home page is about as plain as it gets: "Meet Gemini, your personal AI assistant" and a box that says "Ask Gemini."

What surprised me is that you can type into that box without signing in. The catch is the model menu. Flash-Lite, labeled "Fastest answers," is checked and is the only one you can choose; Flash ("All-around help") and Pro ("Advanced reasoning") are grayed out, with a "Sign in for all models" line underneath. After my first answer, a banner showed up too: "Sign in to connect to Google apps, create images, and more." So without an account you get a quick text assistant, with image creation and saved history waiting behind the sign-in.

My test: four questions, no account

I kept the questions ordinary on purpose, the kind of thing people really ask an assistant.

A calendar question with a trap. I asked how many US federal holidays fall on a Monday in 2027. Gemini said six and listed them with dates, including the tricky one: Independence Day falls on a Sunday in 2027, so it's observed on Monday, July 5. Each line came with a source link next to it. I checked every date against a calendar, and all six were right.

A message to my landlord. I asked for "a short, polite message to my landlord about a water leak under the kitchen sink." Gemini didn't write it. It answered "I can't use Gmail because required Gmail settings are off" and offered a card to turn on Google Workspace smart settings. It seems to have read "message" as "send an email for me." (There's no leak and no landlord, by the way. I made both up for the test.)

So I reworded it: "Write the text of a short, polite message… I'll text it to him myself." This time it wrote exactly what I wanted, a short, natural text with a placeholder for the landlord's name, asking to "arrange to have someone take a look at it when you have a moment."

A grammar question. I asked for the difference between affect and effect, with one example of each, and got a short, correct answer: affect is usually a verb, effect is usually a noun, with one clean example of each. It didn't mention the less common uses, which is fine for a quick answer.

Is Gemini free, according to Gemini? Its answer started with "Yes, Gemini is free to use with standard limits" and listed what Google AI Pro adds: more access to the Pro models, roughly four times the usage, Deep Research, 5 TB of storage. That's mostly in line with Google's plans page. What it never told me was the price, which is the one thing I'd want to know before paying. That's what the next section is for.

Gemini pricing in the US, plan by plan

There's no separate Gemini subscription: you pay for a Google AI plan, which covers Gemini plus extras across Google's other products. These are the prices Google's plans page shows in the US.

If you remember a plan called Google AI Premium, Google says it's now Google AI Plus, with the same Gemini, Gemini Notebook and 400 GB benefits. Two more conditions from the same page: only personal Google Accounts can sign up, and Gemini in the paid plans is for ages 18 and up. If you're a student, Google offers eligible US college students 18 and up a year of Google AI Pro for free if they claim it by December 31, 2026; after that year it renews at $19.99 a month unless you cancel.

Is Gemini free?

Yes, at two levels. Without an account, you get Flash-Lite and plain text answers, which is enough to see whether you like how it writes. With a free Google Account, Google's plans page lists Flash-Lite as its model, plus image generation and editing, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, access to its creative studio, a research and writing assistant and 15 GB of storage. The same page lists the Flash model from Plus, and Pro and Gemini 4 Argon from Pro.

Which plan is worth it

For most people, the honest answer is the free plan for a week, signed in. If you keep running into limits, Plus at $4.99 is a low-risk next step: twice the usage, the Flash model, video generation and 400 GB of storage.

Pro at $19.99 is the plan to get if you'd use what's bundled with it: Gemini inside Docs and Sheets, 5 TB of storage, YouTube Premium Lite, and 1,000 monthly credits in Google Flow, Google's AI video and image studio. Ultra is another story. At $99.99 or $199.99 a month, it's for people who hit Pro's limits every day. Ultra's old selling point, the Deep Think reasoning mode, is being replaced by Gemini 4 Argon, according to Google. And if Gemini 4 is your reason for looking at Ultra, read the next section first: Pro already includes it.

Gemini 4 (Argon): which plans get it

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on September 30, 2026, calling it its "new frontier model," and at first it only went to a group of cyber defenders through a program Google calls Fairwind. That changed on October 13: Google opened it to everyday users in the Gemini app and in AI Mode in Search, but only for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. On the free plan and on Plus you keep the models you had. When I tried Gemini without an account, before that date, the model menu offered Flash-Lite, Flash and Pro.

According to Google, Argon is aimed at long, complex work: real-world software engineering, legal and financial tasks and cybersecurity defense, and Google says it raises the output limit (how much the model can write in one go) to 1 million tokens in the API, up from 64,000. Developers get it through the paid tier of the Gemini API in AI Studio, and Ultra subscribers can also try it in Antigravity, Google's agent-first development platform. The API launch price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens until November 30, 2026; after that, Google lists $4 and $20.

So if Gemini 4 is what you're after, Pro at $19.99 is the cheapest plan that includes it. You don't need Ultra just for that, unless you want it in Antigravity.

Gemini Agent and Gemini Spark: which plan you need

In short, Gemini Spark, the agent Google pitched as working for you 24/7, isn't called Spark anymore. In the Gemini app it's now Tasks, and it needs Google AI Pro at $19.99 a month or Ultra, from $99.99. Gemini Agent is two different things: a line in the Ultra plan ("US only, English only") and, since October 8, 2026, the name of Google Cloud's agent for companies, sold through Gemini Enterprise and separate from your personal plan.

What Tasks does. You flip the Chat/Task switch next to the prompt box and give Gemini a goal instead of a question. According to Google, it plans the steps, works across Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sheets, browses websites with your own Chrome or with a remote browser in the cloud, and keeps going in the background, on a schedule (every morning at 8, say) or when something happens (your flight gets delayed). Google's own examples: clearing out newsletters, watching flight and hotel prices for a drop, and turning research into a PDF or a spreadsheet. Google also says that when a site asks you to sign in and "Sign in with Google" isn't an option, it hands control back to you.

To use it, according to Google's help page, you need a personal Google Account (work and school accounts can't use it yet), you must be 18 or older, and Keep Activity and Personal Intelligence must be on. It works on the web, in the mobile app and in the Mac app. On Pro, it's available in the US in English; it isn't offered in the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland or Nigeria.

Gemini Agent, the consumer one, came first. Google put it on the web on November 18, 2025, as an experimental feature for Ultra subscribers in the US: multi-step jobs using Gmail, Calendar, Deep Research and live browsing, designed, Google said, to ask before sending an email or buying anything. Today it shows up as one line on the Ultra plan, and its old page now sends you to Gemini's home page. If you're on Pro, Tasks is the agent you'll actually use.

The Gemini agent for work is a Google Cloud product. Google announced it on October 8, 2026, as "a single, universal agent for work," built to connect to a company's own systems, work inside Gmail and Docs, and even act as a "coworker agent" with its own email address. Google sells it through Gemini Enterprise, whose plans start at $21 per seat per month, and says some of its abilities are still in early access. Google AI plans are for personal accounts only, so a Pro subscription won't get you this one.

Who it's for, and who should skip it

Gemini fits best if you already live in Google's world: an Android phone, Gmail, Docs, Drive. Even without an account it handled my everyday questions, and signing in for free adds image tools, Deep Research and 15 GB of storage. It's also easy to try: no account, no card, just a question.

Skip it, or at least try something else alongside it, if you'd rather keep your assistant away from your inbox, or if you want search-first answers built around their sources. That's where the alternatives come in.

Gemini or something else?

Claude · Anthropic

Free with limits · from $20/mo

Claude review →

Gemini's strength is the Google account around it. If your days are mostly writing, long documents or code, Claude is Anthropic's assistant built for that kind of work. If you'd rather search than chat, Perplexity answers with its sources on the page. And for a second opinion from another company's models, there's OpenAI's ChatGPT.