Is Gemini free? What you get for £0, and when it’s already in your Google Workspace (UK, 2026)

The short version

• Free: £0 with a Google account, on the Flash-Lite model, with Deep Research, image generation, Gemini Live and Canvas included.
• Not unlimited: your allowance refreshes every five hours until you hit a weekly limit, and Google can tighten it without notice.
• Paid personal plans: Google AI Plus £4.49 a month (twice the free usage), Google AI Pro £18.99 (four times, plus the Pro model), Google AI Ultra £79.99 or £189.99.
• Already in Google Workspace: Business Starter (£5.90 a user a month on a one-year commitment, before VAT) includes Gemini in Gmail and the Gemini app. Business Standard (£11.80) adds Gemini in Docs and Meet, and more of the app.
• The difference that matters for a business: on a personal account, Google asks you not to enter confidential information, because people may review your chats. On Workspace business plans, Google says chats and files won’t be reviewed or used to improve its models.

Is Gemini free?

Yes. Google’s UK plans page lists a free plan at £0 a month “with a Google Account”, and that’s all you need to sign in to the Gemini app on the web or your phone. The free plan includes:

• the Gemini app, with "Access to our Flash-Lite model"
• image generation and editing, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas and Gems
• Gemini Notebook, Google’s research and writing assistant
• the usual 15 GB of storage across Gmail, Drive and Photos

Flash-Lite sits below Flash and Pro in Google’s line-up. The paid plans add those: AI Plus adds Flash, and AI Pro adds Pro.

Is Gemini free unlimited?

No. Google’s help page on limits says Gemini has “compute-based usage limits”, which depend on how hard each request is. Its own summary: "Your limit refreshes every five hours until you reach your weekly limit."

Google doesn’t give the free plan a number of messages. Its table calls the free allowance “Standard limits” and sizes the paid plans against it:

The context window is how much Gemini can read at once. Google’s yardstick is that a 1 million token window covers “up to 1,500 pages of text”. By the same ratio, the free plan’s 32K is roughly 48 pages. That’s our arithmetic, not Google’s, and real documents vary. It’s plenty for an email or a contract, but not for a year of board papers.

What uses up the allowance faster, according to the same page: long conversations, because Gemini re-reads the whole chat each time; large files; Deep Research; and image, music and video generation. Google’s tip is to "Start a new chat when you move to a new topic."

Two lines on that page are worth knowing before you rely on the free plan for work:

• "Limits may change without notice, including due to capacity constraints."
• "If capacity changes, limits for users without a Google AI plan may be limited before users with a plan."

It also says that for free users, Deep Research "may be unavailable during periods of high demand".

What the free plan can’t do

The help page’s feature table gives the free plan a tick for Canvas, Skills, Connected Apps, Audio Overviews, slide generation, Deep Research, image generation with Nano Banana 2 and music generation. It has no tick for:

• video generation
• scheduled actions (asking Gemini to do something at a set time)
• the daily brief
• Tasks in Gemini
• redoing images with Nano Banana Pro

AI Plus adds all of those except Tasks, which needs AI Pro or Ultra.

Has free Gemini changed recently?

Yes. The plans page now lists the free plan with Flash-Lite, and keeps Flash and Pro for the paid plans. None of the Google pages we read says when that changed. The dates come from a news site, 9to5Google, not from Google. It reported on 3 October that from 9 October, free users would lose access to the Flash and Pro models. On 9 October it reported that the change was rolling out, with free users offered an “Auto” setting instead of a choice of model. It quoted Google as saying most prompts would go to Flash-Lite, and prompts that need deeper reasoning “may go to Flash or Pro”. We couldn’t find that wording on Google’s own pages, so treat it as reported.

If free Gemini feels less capable than it did in the summer, that’s probably why.

Added 25 October 2026: something new is also on the way for business owners. On 20 October Google announced new Gemini tools for small business owners: a business landing page, marketing and finance skills, and connections to Google Business Profile, Google Ads and Google Workspace, and to apps such as Adobe, Canva, Dropbox, Shopify, Wix, Zoho and Xero. Google says they “are beginning to roll out in the coming days globally for all Gemini app users”. Its post doesn’t say which plans get which parts, and we haven’t tried them yet. When we checked on 25 October, Google’s Gemini release notes didn’t mention them.

How much does Gemini cost in the UK?

These are the prices on Google’s UK plans page, read on 23 and 25 October 2026:

These are personal plans. Google’s FAQ says AI Pro needs "a personal Google Account that you manage on your own", so they’re not how a business adds Gemini to its staff’s work accounts. Google Workspace is.

Is Gemini free with Google Workspace?

It’s included, so there’s nothing extra to pay if you’re already on a Workspace business plan. Google’s UK Workspace pricing page lists these prices per user per month on a one-year commitment. In Google’s words, the price "does not include tax":

• Business Starter, £5.90: includes "Gemini AI assistant in Gmail" and "Chat with AI in the Gemini app".
• Business Standard, £11.80: adds "Gemini AI assistant in Gmail, Docs, Meet and more", and expanded access to Gemini Notebook. Google’s help page (below) also gives it more of the Gemini app.
• Business Plus, £18.40: everything in Standard, with more storage and security.

With VAT at 20%, Business Starter is £7.08 a user a month. Paying month to month costs more: the page labels the yearly option "Save 16%".

Google’s help page for work accounts shows how far each plan goes. Next to a free personal account:

So the big step up in the Gemini app itself comes with Business Standard. With Business Starter, what you’re paying for is the business email and storage, Gemini inside Gmail, and the last row: how Google treats your data.

Does Google read your Gemini chats?

On a personal account, it can. Google’s Gemini privacy hub says human reviewers, including from its service providers, review some chats to improve its services. It also says:

"Please don't enter confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our services, including machine-learning technologies."

You can reduce this. The hub says: "To stop your future chats from being reviewed to improve Google services, turn off your Keep activity setting." And: "Temporary chats are not used to train Google's AI models." Two limits on that:

• Even with Keep activity off, chats are kept for 72 hours, and Google still uses them to respond to you and to protect its users, "including with help from human reviewers".
• Chats that reviewers have already seen "are not deleted when you delete your activity". Instead, the hub says, they "are retained for up to three years".

On Workspace business plans the help page’s answer is different: "Your chats and uploaded files in Gemini Apps won't be reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve generative AI models." That applies to Business Starter, Standard and Plus, where Gemini is a core service. It doesn’t apply to editions where Gemini is only an additional service, such as Workspace Individual and the old G Suite.

Should your business pay for Gemini?

• You want to try it on everyday, non-confidential jobs (a first draft of an advert, explaining a spreadsheet formula, planning a social post): the free plan is fine.
• You’d paste in customer details, contracts or your figures: don’t do it on a personal account with Keep activity on. Google asks you not to. If you already pay for Workspace, use Gemini through your work account. Google’s work-account page says most users with a work Google account already have it.
• You’re not on Workspace and only want more Gemini for yourself: AI Plus at £4.49 a month is the cheapest step up. It’s still a personal account, so the privacy rules above still apply.
• Your business runs on Microsoft 365: Microsoft has its own version of this question. See our post on whether Copilot is free.

The plans page’s Business tab also lists Gemini Enterprise Business edition, from $21 a seat a month (in dollars, even on the UK page). That’s a separate product, for building your own agents and connecting tools such as HubSpot and Jira. Most small firms won’t need it to start. For working out whether any AI subscription pays for itself, our guide to comparing AI tools by cost per task may help.

A declaration: we use Google Workspace ourselves, as a paying customer, and we build AI tools for businesses. We have no other link with Google, and nothing here is sponsored.

What argues the other way

• We didn’t measure the limits. Google doesn’t publish a message count for the free plan, and we haven’t tested how far it goes.
• This changes often. The free plan’s model changed this month, according to 9to5Google, and Google says limits can change without notice. Check the plans page before you decide.
• Google’s own plans page is out of step with itself on models. Its banner advertises “Gemini 4 Argon” for AI Pro and Ultra, while its FAQ still describes AI Pro as giving access to “3.1 Pro”. We’ve named plans, not model versions, for that reason.
• The Workspace prices are for a one-year commitment, and the page has small print. New customers are offered a discount for their first three months, which we’ve left out. A footnote also talks about an introductory price for new customers, for the first 20 users and 12 months, after which standard pricing applies. The page doesn’t make clear which prices that covers, so check the price you’re shown when you sign up.

Sources

• Google: Gemini subscriptions (UK plans page, prices in pounds, including the Business tab and the FAQ).
• Google Gemini Apps Help: Gemini Apps limits and upgrades for Google AI subscribers, Use Gemini Apps with a work or school Google Account and the Gemini Apps Privacy Hub.
• Google: Google Workspace pricing (UK, prices in pounds, per user per month, one-year commitment, excluding tax).
• Google: Gemini Apps release updates, checked for a dated note on the free plan’s model change (there isn’t one).
• Reported, not from Google: 9to5Google, 3 October 2026 and 9 October 2026.
• Google: New Gemini tools for small business owners (Google’s blog, 20 October 2026).
• All of the pages above were read on 23 October 2026, and again on 25 October 2026, the morning we published (Google’s small-business post on 24 and 25 October). Nothing we quote had changed.
• Every quotation above was tested automatically against the text of its source before publication.