As a part of a massive slate of new AI announcements, Google this week also announced new compute-based usage limits for Gemini – existing users don’t seem too happy about it.
Limits haven’t really been much of a thought for Gemini users to date, but that’s changing following I/O 2026. Google has updated usage limits that take into account the length of chats, features used, and the overall complexity of a prompt. In other words, the more power that goes into your prompt, the more it counts towards your usage limits.
There’s an overall weekly limit, as well as usage limits that reset every five hours.
The change, Google says, is a “better way to allocate limits, because a simple text prompt uses far less compute than a complex video or coding prompt.”
There’s still a powerful, arguably generous free tier, but paid tiers are seeing the most shift. The $7.99/month AI Plus plan doubles your usage limits over the free plan, while the $19.99/month AI Pro plan doubles that again, 4x the limits of the free plan. The higher AI Ultra plans then 5x and 20x the limits of the Pro plan for $100 and $200, respectively, per month. Previously, Google didn’t directly advertise actual figures for the difference in usage limits on its AI plans, instead just using words like “more” and “higher.”
