Google is quietly preparing a new “AI Ultra Lite” subscription tier to slot between its $20 Pro and $250 Ultra plans, plus a dedicated dashboard for subscribers to see their remaining token budget.
If you’ve been following AI news in recent weeks, you know that after months of rapid adoption of AI agents and coding tools, we’ve now entered a bit of a token crunch. Users of Claude have clamored on social media about what feels like notable decreases to their per-session usage limits, while GitHub Copilot has dramatically adjusted the pricing for many of the models it provides access to. Some people (myself included, admittedly) have taken this as a sign to upgrade to a higher-tier subscription plan to maintain unfettered access.
Then there’s Gemini. While Google certainly offers some of the same niceties as Anthropic’s ecosystem — a Gemini CLI, the Antigravity IDE, AI Studio, Stitch, etc. — the coding capabilities of Gemini have not yet captured the hearts of developers and vibecoders. With the company’s annual Google I/O developer conference just weeks away, this seems like a prime opportunity for Gemini to regain lost ground. A recent report from The Information indicates that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is leading a “strike team” to radically improve code creation with Gemini.
Should this strike force succeed, it’s likely that more subscribers would ramp up their Gemini-powered coding and push the limits of their Google AI Plus or Pro subscriptions, as coding agents tend to be quite token heavy. As it stands today, your only upgrade options from there are to either switch to the Gemini API and pay directly for your usage or switch to the Google AI Ultra plan, which runs a hefty $250 per month in the US. This is a dramatic increase over the Pro plan’s $20 monthly rate and even exceeds Anthropic’s Claude Max 20x plan.
As spotted by our APK Insight team, the latest update to the recently launched Gemini app for macOS includes new signs of an in-between plan to bridge the gap between AI Pro and AI Ultra. The new plan carries the codename “Neon” and is currently dubbed “Google AI Ultra Lite” though this branding is unlikely to be final.
RobinApolloNeon__neon_brand_name_in_mavatar
ULTRA LITE
RobinApolloNeon__neon_brand_name_string
Google AI Ultra Lite
Nothing in the app points to a price point for this upper-mid-level subscription, though somewhere between $50 and $150 would reasonably separate it from the Pro and Ultra plans. Both Anthropic and OpenAI offer a $100 plan, which Google may seek to match.
Neither is there any information about the additional Gemini features that would be included in Google AI Ultra Lite compared to Pro, other than the increased usage limits. As it stands, the highest AI Ultra plan offers exclusive demos like Project Genie, increased usage of the video & music generator Flow, larger notebooks in NotebookLM, and premium features in several other more traditional Google apps.
Alongside the shakeup to Google’s AI subscriptions, the Gemini app also points to an upcoming dedicated page to display your token usage to make an informed assessment of whether you’re paying for the correct plan:
SETTINGS_MENU_USAGE_LIMITS
Usage limits
gemini.google.com/usage
Anthropic offers an equivalent usage page for Claude subscribers, showing what percentage of their token budget is available for the current “session,” when that session limit resets next, and how much is available in their weekly budget. Gemini’s usage page is not yet live but seems poised to offer a similar experience. Matching the current experience visible in Google Antigravity, Gemini uses separate five-hour and weekly usage limits, as well as overage credits to go beyond your subscription’s allotment:
GXU_FIVE_HOURLY
GXU_WEEKLY
OVERAGE_CREDITS
Having a visual indicator of your current token budget makes it easy to know whether you have enough headroom to begin a token-heavy agentic coding session or if you should wait a few hours.
Between Gemini preparing a usage indicator and an upper-middle tier “Google AI Ultra Lite” subscription, it seems Google is positioning itself to handle a major increase in demand for its AI models. What remains to be seen is whether Google will succeed in driving new demand for its models and tools.
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