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 has been announced, but it isn't in the app yet.

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.

On the US plans page, both Ultra plans are billed monthly only. 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. Students get discounted pricing on Plus and Pro after verification.

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 the Flash model, "varying access" to Pro, image generation and editing, access to its creative studio, a research and writing assistant and 15 GB of storage. "Varying access" means just that: how much Pro you get on the free plan can change.

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, more Pro and Deep Research, 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 or want Deep Think, the reasoning mode that comes with Ultra. And if Gemini 4 is your reason for looking at Ultra, read the next section first.

Gemini 4 (Argon): what Google has announced

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on September 30, 2026, calling it its "new frontier model." Right now it isn't something you can pick in the Gemini app: the announcement says it's rolling out to "a set of trusted cyber defenders" through a program Google calls Fairwind, and the model menu I saw only offered Flash-Lite, Flash and Pro.

According to Google's announcement, Argon is aimed at long, complex work: real-world software engineering, legal and financial tasks and cybersecurity defense. Google says it's raising the output limit (how much the model can write in one go) to 1 million tokens, up from 64,000. When it does open up, Google says it will start with paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers, before reaching developers, enterprises and consumers more broadly. For developers, the announced introductory API price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens.

So if you're on the free plan, Plus or Pro, nothing changes for you today. If Gemini 4 is the only reason you'd pay $99.99 for Ultra, wait until Google actually turns it on.

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 the Flash model, some Pro access and image tools. 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.