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Bait and switch : Google faces massive backlash for quietly reducing usage limits on its AI Pro plan
Google unveiled a number of big AI updates at the company's I/O 2026 developer conference on Monday, including Gemini Spark agent platform, Antigravity 2.0, Gemini Omni world model and Gemini 3.5 Flash, among others.
However, the company also quietly made changes to its Google AI plans, with the top-end AI Ultra plan getting a $50 discount and now starting at $200, while a new Google AI Ultra tier has been introduced at $100 per month. Another quiet change Google appears to have made is cutting down the limits on its AI Pro subscription, which coincidentally is currently available free of charge to a number of Indian users with a Jio SIM card.
The new changes to the Google AI Pro plan seem to have gotten under the skin of social media users, with netizens showing their frustration on platforms like Reddit.
Google quietly changes AI Pro plan terms:
As per a report by Android Authority, Google began sending emails to AI Pro subscribers notifying them of the changes it is making to the plan. Google also appears to have taken a page from Anthropic's playbook by introducing a new five-hour rolling window system. This means that once users burn through their compute quota, they are forced to wait for the five-hour cycle to refresh.
“For the Gemini app, we’re introducing compute-based usage limits that factor in the complexity of your prompt, the features that you use and the length of your chat. Your limit will refresh every five hours until you reach your weekly limit.”
The email sent by Google, as quoted by Android Authority, states that AI Pro subscribers will get limits that are "four times higher" than free users, but Google does not disclose the exact token or prompt counts.
Netizens frustrated with Google's AI Pro plan changes:
Soon after the changes came into effect for the Google AI Pro plan, the r/GeminiAI subreddit began filling up with complaints from frustrated users, many of whom even threatened to cancel their subscriptions in protest.
"They didn't even bother sending an email about this massive contract change," one user wrote in a viral thread. "I burned 50% of my entire 5-hour limit on a single 5-post response back and forth today. I am not going to treat AI like a mobile game energy meter, and I am definitely not going to start a brand-new chat every five minutes just to bypass the heavy compute tax on long threads."
Another subscriber expressed disbelief at how fast their limits were depleted: "Exactly 4 prompts finished my 5 hours quota. They were PDF generation, image generation and explaining code, all on Pro model. On another quota after reset, it counted a failed generation (literally just printed a message saying the model is under stress and to try again later). Happened several times and all got counted into the quota."
Many other users were also left frustrated with the five-hour usage window.
"The least they could do is just set a daily quota, man. Why every 5 hours??" one user argued. "I don't use Gemini while sleeping nor at some parts of the day... Looks like they are trying to mimic Anthropic and get away with it."
Other users on Reddit also complained that even failed media generations still counted against AI Pro quota usage. Some users further claimed they were switched from the Pro model to the Flash version despite selecting "Pro" in model preferences.
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