Here’s When Gemini Advanced Is Worth the Monthly Fee
As with other AI bots like ChatGPT and Copilot, there are free and paid options for Google Gemini: For $20 a month, you can upgrade to the Google One AI Premium plan, which includes Gemini Advanced. Chances are you’re already signed up for a lot of digital subscriptions, so is Gemini Advanced shelling out even more money?
Here’s how the features in the free plan and the Google One AI Premium plan stack up against each other right now—keep in mind that the paid plan includes some extra features beyond the Gemini Advanced AI I listed at the end. As a Google One AI Premium subscriber, I also talked a little about my experience using these features.
Comparable Features
Features that are the same across both the free and paid plans are likely a good start. All users, whether they subscribe to a paid plan or not, can use file downloads and analysis in their suggestions, although Gemini Advanced users can work with larger files (downloads can reach up to 1,500 pages if you pay).
Image generation is available to all Gemini users, although images with people are only available in Gemini Advanced. All users can chat with AI in real time through the Gemini Live interface, and all users can connect to other Google apps, including Google Maps and Google Flights.
The other basic capabilities of AI—generating and rewriting code and text, searching the Internet for information, providing advice on almost every conceivable topic, and coming up with new ideas and perspectives—are the same in every way. However, Gemini Advanced is smarter in all these areas.
Best models
With Gemini Advanced, you get access to the best AI models Google has to offer, and these models eventually move to the free tier as new ones are released. The difference is hard to quantify, but Google says its top-tier models are “much better at highly complex tasks” such as coding, reasoning and creative collaboration.
As of this writing, the best AI model available for free users is Flash 2.0 , and the best Gemini Advanced AI model is 2.0 Pro Experimental. In the tests I ran with code and text generation, the advanced AI model is noticeably better in terms of detail and comprehensiveness, but the free AI model is quite adequate.
The more demanding your needs, the better Gemini Advanced is for you. If you’re working on complex math problems or complex software coding, then the upgrade is probably worth it; if you’re aiming for your emails to sound less wordy, maybe not.
More AI capabilities
Another add-on you get with Gemini Advanced is Deep Research, which essentially runs and writes a detailed report on a topic of your choice using resources found online. I asked the tool for a full overview of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s features and what it means for the foldable market, and it responded within seven minutes.
The article that came out the other end was mostly accurate and well written, if a little general. It hits all the key points that users need to know before listing website sources at the end, which is handy for fact checking and is also a reminder that AI doesn’t actually know anything, it just collects and sorts human knowledge.
There’s also NotebookLM, Google’s AI research tool that can create AI-powered podcasts for you . If you’re on the Google One AI Premium plan, you get more NotebookLM features across the board: 20 audio podcasts per day instead of 3,500 Q&A per day instead of 50,300 sources per notebook instead of 50, and 500 notebooks per user instead of 100.
After that, there are Gemini Gems , customizable AI bots that you can create inside Gemini to focus on specific tasks. You can create Gems for things like programming, resume writing, or fitness training, upload documents they can reference and practice, and specify the tone and approach of their responses.
Several other features are currently exclusive to Gemini Advanced, including the ability for Gemini to remember certain pieces of information about you (like your job and interests), and the ability to access previous chats . It remains to be seen whether these smaller features will eventually make it to the free plan.
Finally, Gemini Advanced users can get artificial intelligence built right into Google’s online apps, including Google Docs and Gmail. This can be useful for analyzing files and messages and creating new ones, but I tend to ignore it completely because I can’t find a use for it – your experience may vary.
Is Google One AI Premium worth it?
I should also mention that Google One AI Premium is the Google One plan: you get 2TB of storage for Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive, which will cost you $10 per month separately. Essentially, you’re paying $10 more for Gemini Advanced, so your choice depends in part on whether you need more storage for Google data.
If you spend a lot of time seriously using AI, or just experimenting with it, then Gemini Advanced may well be for you: the AI is better, you have tools like Deep Research and Gems to use, and you can also use the AI in other Google apps. It’s certainly useful for my work to be able to test the latest models and all the features Gemini has to offer (but certainly not for churning out articles).
If you don’t see any practical use for AI right now, the free version of Google Gemini is fine: there’s still a lot you can do with it, and it still provides a high level of answers across a wide range of problems. It’s also worth keeping in mind that you can try Google One AI Premium for free for a month to see if you can get enough benefit from it.