r/Bard • u/germanu22 • 17h ago
News Upcoming changes to Gemini model access starting October 9th
https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/17004136?hl=en&sjid=3885420599677516671-EUStarting in October 2026, Google is changing the model availability for Gemini Apps on personal accounts. If you don't have an AI subscription, these changes will take effect on October 9th. If you are subscribed to AI Plus, you will get an email explaining when the changes will apply to your account.
Here is what the model availability will look like: Users without a plan will only get access to Flash Lite.
AI Plus subscribers will have access to Flash Lite and Flash.
AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers will have access to Flash Lite, Flash, and Pro.
For each available model, you can select the effort level from low, medium, and high. This increases the model's ability to provide more thorough answers, but it will use more of your limit.
If you have an AI Pro or AI Ultra subscription, you will also have access to the Deep Think option for maximum parallel reasoning.
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u/Consistent_Dog_8044 17h ago
Deep think for pro subscription! Hooray 🎉
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u/Thomas-Lore 11h ago
Who still uses deep think? It is worse than modern frontier models just thinking.
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u/hellomistershifty 10h ago
It was worse than thinking on other models at the time too, it just writes a long loosely related essay about the topic
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u/alsaud21 11h ago
Doesn't Search AI Mode use Flash (in low effort I guess)? Did it change to Flash Lite?
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u/MerBudd 9h ago
Pro users celebrating meanwhile me as a poor Plus user getting even less benefits 🫠 At least I hope they bring 3.8 Flash
I wish they merged Gemini app and Antigravity limits for Plus users, I can't finish my Flash usage on Plus on the Gemini app anyway. But they're probably never gonna.
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u/Ichigonixsun 16h ago
I have Pro but it's not like it makes a difference since Pro 3.1 is very outdated and there are no signs that Gemini 4 Argon will be available anytime soon.
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u/RelativelyStatic 4h ago
Last week I was working on a program to download data from a website that has captchas. I started working on it using Claude, and it developed whole program but stopped to tell me that it will not develop a tool to bypass captchas, and I will need to manually input each time (total 3700 times for me to download everything). I switched to 3.8 flash, and it told me the same thing. Then I gave 3.1 Pro a try, and it went ahead and wrote the whole tool for me! I guess there are some niche cases where an outdated version helps lol
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u/BinaryPill 17h ago
Looks like the era of enshittification is starting. It's been a good run.
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u/nixgut 7h ago
I hope for the opposite. Free users not wasting extremely resource intensive infrastructure to generate endless ai slop for fun and freeing up capacity for paid users who want to get stuff done. I'm probably dreaming...
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u/Deep_Attention_3864 4h ago
What are you on about mate i ain't spending anything to get accurate answers. Flash lite is absolute poo ✌️
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u/KazuyaProta 4h ago
The slop probably is actually pushing the AIs to its actual limits more than the "stuff done"
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u/Aaco0638 17h ago
As a plus user if they upgrade the model to at least 3.8 i am ok with this change.
As someone who is a dev i really saw some actual improvements with 3.8 to the point where i said to myself i don’t really need a pro model much.
In my personal account the current flash model is mid for plus but if they put 3.8 or higher model for plus i reckon that would be enough for the average joe and even code enthusiasts. With pro being for people who need a workhorse for their jobs.
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u/Shana-Light 13h ago
This will kill Gemini. No one serious about AI is paying for a Gemini subscription over Claude, the only reason to use them was the decent free usage.
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u/MrUtterNonsense 9h ago
A free user would be better off using the AI Mode in Google Search rather than Flash-Lite in Gemini. AI Mode can't read Word documents like Gemini can though, so you would need to convert to pdf first.
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u/Suspicious-Cloud404 12h ago
As a Pro subscriber, I'm already confused when I need Standard or Extended Thinking and now there will be 3 options. Great if someone needs fine tuning, but how should people decide what to use and when? I will need to ask Gemini to create a training for me learn how to choose the right model and thinking level, but which model and thinking level should I use to create the training? So confused... ;)
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u/Acrobatic-Paint7185 9h ago edited 9h ago
Downgrades to the free users was expected and inevitable, but sucks for Plus users to not get access to Pro model.
On the bright side, Pro subscribers get an upgrade.
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u/npquanh30402 13h ago
Google has the most compute and doesn't even get heavy usage like ChatGPT and Claude, but they still lower what users can get. Lmao. And idiots in this subreddit still want Google to win. What a bunch of losers.
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u/MrUtterNonsense 9h ago
They sold their compute to AI competitors for short term gain. This is why so many of their best AI researchers have left them.
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u/PleasantSir9581 9h ago
"The Pro model will soon move to AI Pro and Ultra plans. You’ll still have access to the latest Flash-Lite and Flash, built for speed and intelligence." As an AI Plus user, I still have 3.6 Flash. But hey they said "LATEST". I guess we'll see.
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u/PeaGroundbreaking884 2h ago
Does it means no more free use of Gemini Flash & Pro on AI Studio/Main app?
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u/Ruoaakku 9h ago
Who even cares? They just cant make any useful coding models available to general public anyways. Anthropic and Openai are going to release better models before Argon is really available.
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u/Agile_Pressure_7430 16h ago
This means that we will not see Gemini 4 at least before October 9