Earlier this summer, Google rolled out a bunch of upgrades to its Gemini AI apps, making them more powerful than ever. Google’s AI can now work across more apps, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to use anything made by Google without bumping into some kind of AI feature or assistant.

Besides all of the AI upgrades though, there are also new limits on usage. Google has completely revamped the way that AI usage is measured and metered out across the various tiers: Free, Plus, Pro, and Ultra.

If you’ve suddenly found yourself running out of 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.

How AI Usage Is Changing

Faster models capable of greater complexity will require more credits to run.

Photograph: Courtesy of David Nield

Google now measures Gemini AI usage by the computing power requirements of your requests, not by the number of requests you make. So, whereas before you might have been able to generate three videos a day, now you might find you can generate only two if the videos are particularly complex.

It makes more sense from Google’s perspective, because it’s measuring how much you’re actually costing the company and its data centers in terms of resources. However, it’s all a bit vague for end users, who are now less sure about when they’ll hit their limits—and it means you can’t rely on a rule like “5 image generations a day.”

What’s more, Google says in its support docs that “access is subject to change or may be limited based on testing, experimentation or availability”—which roughly translates as “some days may be different from others” when it comes to how much AI prompting you can do. Again, easier for Google to manage, more confusing for actual users.

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—asking for a weather forecast versus asking for a mini-app to be coded, for example. On top of that, the Gemini AI model you use (for example, 3.5 Flash) makes a difference too. You can select the preferred model from the prompt box.

The Quotas for Each Plan

Video generation is more resource-intensive.

Photograph: Courtesy of David Nield

If you’re in the US, you’ve got four Gemini AI subscriptions to choose from, or you can stick to the free tier. The subscription plans are AI Plus ($8 a month), AI Pro ($20 a month), and AI Ultra (either $100 or $200 a month). The more you pay, the more AI usage you get, which means using more advanced AI models for longer.

Google doesn’t specify what the usage limits are on the free tier—it describes them only 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 those models, they get smarter and will count more toward usage. Each model also has different “thinking” levels—Standard, Extended, and Deep Think—which also affect response quality, speed, and usage limits.

The final difference between these models is context window size. Basically, this 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).

Check Your AI Usage

You can see how close you are to your plan’s limits.

Photograph: Courtesy of David Nield

While the new rules around AI usage may be lacking in specifics, at least it’s easy enough to check your status. 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. The top bar shows your current usage, which resets every five hours. If you run through this, you’ll need to wait before coming back; the Gemini app tells you the time of the next reset.

The second bar is your weekly limit, which as you might expect, resets every week. (Again, this will be shown onscreen.) If you hit these limits and you’re on a paid plan, you’ll be demoted to the most basic AI model, which you can continue to use until the next reset.

You will, inevitably, see offers to upgrade your AI plan on the usage limits screen. It’s also worth bearing in mind that Google’s support documents say limits may change without notice, due to capacity constraints—and that free users may be affected first if Google needs to manage its AI resources.