Google cut free Gemini down to a single model
Starting Friday, Gemini app users without a Google AI subscription are limited to the 3.5 Flash-Lite model, losing on-demand access to 3.6 Flash and 3.1 Pro, per an updated Google support document. AI Plus subscribers at $4.99 a month keep Flash-Lite and Flash but lose Pro as well. Only AI Pro at $19.99 and AI Ultra keep the full lineup, and AI Pro gains the Deep Think reasoning mode that had been reserved for the $100-plus tiers.
The change lands nine days after Google unveiled Gemini 4 Argon, the frontier model it calls its most capable, and gated it to cybersecurity defenders in its Fairwind Program rather than opening it to the public or its full developer base. Argon’s introductory API price is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output. Google has not said where Argon will sit in the consumer lineup, or whether it will reach the free tier at all.
WHY IT MATTERS
Read together, the two moves are one strategy seen from two angles: frontier capability is rationed upward toward the enterprise and security customers who pay, and the free tier is rationed down as compute gets expensive. For a builder the signal is the direction of travel rather than any one model - the broadly free frontier chat product is closing, and the cheap tiers are being reserved for exactly the narrow, high-volume work the decider and small models are built for. The caveat deserves one line: Google published no capacity or margin rationale; the support document simply states the new limits.