Google's AI Assistants Get More Powerful, But Usage Limits Tighten Up

Google has been rolling out upgrades to its Gemini AI apps over the summer, making them more powerful than ever. The company’s AI can now work across multiple apps, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to use anything made by Google without encountering some kind of AI feature or assistant. This is all part of a broader trend in which AI assistants are becoming an integral part of our digital lives.

The upgrades have also brought about changes to how AI usage is measured and metered out across the various tiers: Free, Plus, Pro, and Ultra. If you’ve found yourself running low on credit at the Gemini AI bank and being told to wait before making any further prompt requests, this might be why. Here’s what’s changing, and how to check where your AI credit stands.

Google now measures Gemini AI usage by the computing power requirements of your requests, not just the number of requests you make. This means that whereas before you might have been able to generate three videos a day, now you might find you can only generate two if the videos are particularly complex. It makes more sense from Google’s perspective because it measures how much you’re actually costing the company and its data centers in terms of resources.

This change is all about measuring actual usage rather than just counting requests. However, for end users, this new system can be a bit vague, making it harder to know when they’ll hit their limits—and it means that relying on rules like ‘5 image generations a day’ won’t cut it anymore. Google’s support documents also mention that access is subject to change or may be limited based on testing, experimentation, or availability.

This translates roughly as ‘some days may be different from others’ when it comes to how much AI prompting you can do. Again, this makes sense for Google to manage its resources but can be confusing for actual users who just want to know what they’re getting themselves into. The two main factors that go into how much AI you can use are the plan you’re on and the complexity and length of your prompts.

For example, asking for a weather forecast versus asking for a mini-app to be coded makes all the difference in terms of usage limits. On top of this, the Gemini AI model you use also plays a role—selecting from options like 3.5 Flash can make a significant difference. You can choose your preferred model from within the prompt box.

If you’re in the US, you’ve got four Gemini AI subscriptions to choose from: AI Plus ($8 a month), AI Pro ($20 a month), and AI Ultra (either $100 or $200 a month). The free tier is also available, but Google doesn’t specify what its usage limits are—it simply describes them as ‘standard’. You then get 2x these standard limits on the AI Plus plan, and 4x on the AI Pro plan.

The AI Ultra limits are either 5x or 20x higher than those on AI Pro, depending on which level of payment you’re on. All users have access to all the Gemini AI models, including Flash-Lite, Flash, and Pro. As you progress through these models, they get smarter and will count more toward usage.

Each model also has different ‘thinking’ levels—Standard, Extended, and Deep Think—which affect response quality, speed, and usage limits in various ways. The final difference between these models is context window size, which indicates how much information you can include in a single conversation thread.

For free users, the context window is 32K tokens (small chunks of text)—roughly 24,000 words. For AI Plus users, it goes up to 128K tokens (about 96,000 words), and for AI Pro and Ultra users, the limit is a million tokens (about 750,000 words).

While the new rules around AI usage may be lacking in specifics, at least checking your status is easy enough. In the Gemini app on the web, click the cog icon (lower left) then Usage limits; in the mobile app for Android or iOS, tap the menu button (top left), then the cog, then Usage limits.

You’ll see two bars: one showing your current usage and another displaying your weekly limit. The top bar resets every five hours, while the bottom one resets each week. If you hit these limits and you’re on a paid plan, you’ll be demoted to the most basic AI model until the next reset.