Some changes in Gemini AI
While everyone is expecting Gemini AI 3.5 to be released tomorrow, May 19, at Google I/O 2026, some changes took place in advance.
Starting on May 17, 2026, there are some Changes to Gemini model access and limits:
The changes listed below only apply if you are 18 or over. If you are under the age of 18, there are currently no changes to your usage limits.
Usage limits for Gemini Apps
Gemini will move to compute-based usage limits that will refresh every 5 hours until you reach your weekly limit. Calculation of your usage will factor in the complexity of your prompt, the features you use, and the length of your chat. Paid users have higher limits than users without a Google AI subscription.
Premium models and features require more usage and may cause you to reach your limit faster. This would include things like:
- Media generation
- Images, videos and music
- Deep Research
- Pro Model
- Extended thinking and Deep Think
Usage limits
Plan Limit Without a plan Standard limits AI Plus 2x higher than standard limits AI Pro 4x higher than standard limits AI Ultra 20x higher than AI Pro
This is crazy!
What needs to be understood:
- Some people wrongly understood that underage users have no limits. What happens is that their limits didn’t change, not that they’re infinite! It’s likely that their limits are now higher than for adults, but I expect more severe censorship and a complete ban on certain topics for people under 18. The answering style might be different, too, for accounts of minors.
- The refresh at 5 hours is now explicitly stated, but I’m not sure that there’s anything new in that.
- The limits in tokens are still not stated, but the usage calculation is better defined: complexity, features, and length, where the length affects the context.
- It’s a shame that AI Plus only offers twice as much as the free tier, and AI Pro only twice as much as AI Plus. The problem is that AI Pro costs about 2.75x AI Plus (say, €21.99/mo vs. €7.99/mo), but only offers 2x in usage!
- To be honest, this is not entirely accurate. The official list of features adds to AI Pro “higher limits in AI Studio, Google Antigravity, and Jules” and “higher limits in Gemini CLI and the Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions, plus $10 in monthly Google Cloud credits from Google Developer Program.” If I’m not wrong, those credits are to be used with an API key, not in everyday OAuth usage. And how much higher are those limits for Gemini CLI and the Gemini Code Assist? It’s anyone’s guess.
That said, it’s probably not the end of the world yet. However, hysteria is already happening on Reddit.
Take this one: Gemini Pro New Limit is Messed Up:
Could believe it this morning, but at 1pm, when my limit was reinitialized, I just sent 3 prompts and bam, can’t use Gemini Pro for the next 5 hours. Came here and learnt that Gemini usage had been restricted.
That’s ridiculous. I’m in the middle of writing a book for high school students. I’m at the end of a chapter, so of course the context is huge with all the exercises it contains. And I’m stuck on 5 prompts every 5 hours!!!!
I’m trying not to panic and find a solution. Here’s all the alternatives I’ve come up with :
- Create a new Google Account declaring that I’m under 18 because apparently the new usage limit only apply to 18 years and older.
- Go and try DeepSeek. Unsubscribe to Gemini Pro because being blocked after 5 prompts is not manageable.
- Try to change the way I use Gemini (instead of writing a whole chapter in one discussion, separate each part in several discussions, remove the personalization parameters).
- Try Claude: but I’ve heard that Claude is great for code, not so much for the math work and writing text. Plus, seems like Claude also has set a usage limit.
Thanks to anyone who can help me !
Firstly, this guy is contradicting himself: is the limit 3 Gemini Pro prompts in a 5-hr window, or 5 prompts? In my experience as a free user, it’s always been 3 Gemini Prompts until you’re kicked out!
Oh, wait, he says he’s a Gemini Pro subscriber! Not Plus, but Pro. If the “4x higher than standard limits” means “5 Gemini Pro” prompts, then the idiot is using an entire book chapter as context, and that chapter is huge!
I’m not sure why is he that sure that DeepSeek would give him truly unlimited usage. Another guy is also a DeepSeek fan: “I use DeepSeek almost exclusively now. The web client has no limits. The API is cheap af.” Oh, well, as long as he doesn’t hit any stupid censorship… But unspecified (“unlimited”) web client usage is also offered by Qwen.
As for an underage Google account, I’m sure it would be hit by severe censorship.
In other news, some people are shown different options in the Android app. Different from the standard ones, which is what I see in my app. (Source 1, Source 2.)
They both seem to be using paying accounts, but some users of free accounts have received the first change, too. The normal choices for most people (even paid accounts) are still Fast, Thinking, and Pro.
The adjustment of the thinking level would be nice. It would make even more sense in the context of the second change, which might prepare the ground for this future set of options:
- Fast → 3.1 Flash Lite
- Thinking → 3 Flash with adjustable thinking
- Pro → 3.5 Pro
Only time will tell. But people, even if they pay (OK, it’s their money), rely too much on AI. They really deserve that decrease in limits or increase in costs.
Oh, someone has both new changes present, and it seems that the thinking level can be adjusted globally, although it makes no sense for Fast or 3.1 Flash Lite. Maybe it only applies to the other two models. A free user from Bangladesh:
Update 1 (May 19)
I received the new settings. The thinking level can (and should) be changed from Standard to Extended for each of the 3 models, because it defaults to Standard for all of them!
Update 2 (May 19)
Hysteria continues on Reddit.
Google just scammed me as a Pro subscriber
I manually selected Gemini 3.1 Pro Extended (sent my first message of the day) and Google silently, without consent, swapped me to the brain-dead Flash model.
Their excuse? “Pro is in high demand.”
I’m a paying Pro subscriber. I didn’t hit any limit. I sent one single message. And Google decided to override my model choice and serve me their cheapest, most inferior model like I’m on a free tier.
This is bait-and-switch fraud. You sell “Pro” access, you take Pro money, and the second it’s inconvenient for your servers, you silently downgrade paying customers without asking.
Google, either fix your infrastructure or stop selling subscriptions. We are not your backup plan.
● Gemini’s New “Update” is a Total Disappointment: The “Lite” Downgrade Fiasco. This is about the fact that all 3 models now default to a “Standard” thinking level that actually means “no thinking.” The rest is nonsense.
● It really was too good to be true:
Gemini has reduced usage limits for every plan, downgraded Pro and Thinking so that they use the same usage limit.
Recently, Anthropic was buckling under the pressure of token cost, and now it looks like Google also can’t justify the costs anymore…
I think the era of subsidized token spend to acquire users is ending. This is the dark ages at this point.
Pro is also downgraded in performance w/o using extended, weekly token limits introduced, etc.
We’ll see how good 3.2 is I guess.
Fair enough. But some people hallucinate:
Previously, usage limits were determined on a number of prompts basis.
For instance, people on a pro plan could use 100 prompts with the Pro mode. With these new usage limits, it seems to be determined on the number of tokens present in the users context window when they use Pro or Flash thinking. So only 3-5 prompts using Pro mode could cause the user to reach their usage limit.
They also decreased performance of Pro by delineating it between ‘standard’ and ‘extended’. Pro and Thinking also now share the same usage limits.
The legend that you had 100 Pro prompts for a Pro plan is a legend, as anything that involves a number of prompts. Google never promised any concrete limits! Never ever! Such legends are based on people reports, not on any Google documentation!
Before these changes, I made Gemini answer this:
Based on current technical logs and user reports, the “concrete” values—even if Google won’t put them on a sales page—look like this:
Plan Gemini 3 Pro Flash with Thinking Gemini 3 Flash Free ~10–15 total/day ~25 total/day General Access AI Plus 30 prompts/day 90 prompts/day High Capacity AI Pro 100 prompts/day 300 prompts/day High Capacity AI Ultra 500 prompts/day 1,500 prompts/day “Unlimited” / Highest
● The new limits are an absolute scam:
One single prompt with Pro subscription used up 13 percent of my available quota.
At first, we had 100 prompts per day, which you could use anytime you wanted to. It promised 1 million tokens of context window, yet it was way less than that, but at least with somewhat usable limits.
Then, they put a 4-hourly limit on it which kicked in way before you reached 100 prompts. Totally unannounced sneaky move.
And now this? Seriously, Google? Microsoft has already ruined GitHub Copilot, looks like Google is following them into the gutter, ruining everything that was good about the platform until now.
First, this idiot reached 13% of his 5-hr quota, not of his daily quota. And we don’t know anything about the complexity and context of his prompt. Then, those 100 Pro prompts “at any time” are a myth. As for the previous reset window, I don’t believe it was specified. Now it’s 5 hours, but in the past it seemed to depend on system load, at least for free users.
Other reports from the same thread:
- I have Pro and already hit 40% of my limit. I was just trying to edit an image that I could post in facebook.
- For me 1 prompt perhaps totals 2%?
- I have Plus, and I created one game using Canvas and generated five images, I have only reached 26%.
- They’re copying Claude. Nothing more to it.
8 minutes is not a measurement of anything. Again, 100% for the current 5-hr window.
OK, what chatbots should people use and pay for? Claude and Gemini have downgraded anyone, and Grok has downgraded free users.
Update 3 (May 19)
● Powerful AI, right in Search
Starting today, we’re upgrading Search with Gemini 3.5 Flash — our newest Flash model delivering sustained frontier performance for agents and coding — as the new default model in AI Mode for everyone globally.
Gemini 3.5 Flash is generally available via Google Antigravity, the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Android Studio, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and Gemini Enterprise. It’s also now available to everyone in the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search.
Oh, wait: it arrived!
● The new plans split the Ultra plan into two plans: Google AI Ultra 5x and Google AI Ultra 20x.
Update 4 (May 20)
From the atrocious hysteria on Reddit, a selection of 10 more threads.
● Boycott Gemini For New Ridiculous Limits. Excerpt:
Google really copied the wrong things from Claude. I’ve been subscribed to Gemini Pro for quite a while now, but I finally cancelled my subscription because of these ridiculous daily and weekly limits.
Gemini Legacy wasn’t perfect, but at least it felt usable and almost unlimited. The newer models are definitely more advanced, but honestly, they’re still not on the same level as Claude by Anthropic.
The difference is that Claude is expensive because the quality actually justifies it. With Gemini, it feels like we’re getting stricter limits without enough improvement to make those limits worth it.
Google had something great with Gemini Legacy, and instead of improving the user experience, they made it more restrictive.
Selected comments:
- Buddy, you better go look into the cost increases coming from copilot and anthropic. Gemini isn’t alone in what you’re observing. The party is over soon.
- If you’re cost conscious, there’s always Deepseek. US companies are only now starting to care about their bottom line.
- For my case at least I can’t use deepseek because it refuses to talk about anything related to China. I do alternate history so sometimes it touches on there, but the outputs stop suddenly (for instance, if Mao Zedong’s name appears), censored, etc. Which is a shame too since it seems like a good model. Wish I could switch but unfortunately it seems all Chinese AI are like this, so I have no choice but staying with the American ones…
- Hey man, you just litteraly pay 20 buck per month, what do you expect?
- Google really had the chance to dominate AI with Gemini Legacy… but instead they copied the worst parts of competitors.
Daily limits. Weekly limits. Restrictions everywhere.
The funniest part? Claude is expensive too, but at least the quality justifies it. Gemini adds stricter limits without giving users a reason to accept them.
Users don’t hate paying. Users hate feeling restricted after paying.
Gemini Legacy felt usable. The new Gemini feels controlled.
At this point, Google isn’t competing with OpenAI or Anthropic… they’re competing with their own bad decisions.- I’m on a 2nd year of free promo for Gemini Pro and it has gotten terrible. Not only is the research almost always wrong, but now I can’t do more than a few per day. If is really wasn’t free I’d be out.
Just wrote 2 prompts and showed 27% quota gone. Before update there was no limit on pro subscription.
The 5-hr quota.
Selected comments:
- Pro workaround, don’t use the create image button. Use the keywords, “Make an image (or video) of (insert your desired image or video, it also works off of an uploaded photo on the same prompt of desired)” in the normal prompt box.
- For all the people that is complaining about the new limits. I recommend buying a google workspace subscription. Here’s a comparison:
Personal account: Gemini models: 3.1 flash-lite, 3.5 flash, 3.1 pro. You have the option to choose the thinking level (standard or extended) You have the new limits that are horrible.
Workspace account: Gemini models: 3.5 flash. 3.5 thinking, 3.1 pro. You don’t have the option to choose the thinking level because it is choosen by how complex is your prompt. You have the old limits and not the new one. So with the new models and features you still got the old limits. Your chats can’t be reviewed by human and can’t be used to train models.
It’s been months since I had this workspace account and NEVER reached any limit (only the daily 3 videos. But now that there’s Gemini omni instead of Veo I don’t know the new limit).
Plus the workspace account cost even less, about 15 € and the ai pro costs 22 €.
I have the Google workspace standard plan and I also have the ai expanded access add-on.- Personally, I really liked the new limits for Gemini, because a single message on 3.5 Flash only eats up like 1–2% of the limit depending on complexity. For me, sending about 100 messages every 5 hours, so roughly 300 messages per day for this model—which is more than enough, especially since the output is much bigger than Pro now. I’ve even used it to explain some study material, and it was good; I liked its accuracy and speed. Especially since hallucinations have decreased compared to the old Flash, and it’s faster—I don’t have to wait for Pro to answer every question. Yeah, its intelligence level is still lower than Pro, but it’s a huge improvement over the old Flash. And there are still the limits of Google AI Studio, the limits in the new Flow app for images, the limits in Build inside AI Studio, and the limits in Antigravity… I haven’t tried all of them yet, but even if I need more messages or images, there are plenty of ways to get them. Plus, if you add your accounts to your Google family, you’ll get bigger and bigger limits.
- Ii’m baffled that people are surprised by these changes. Enshitification a its finest. Capture a large user base and then lower the quality and up the price. It’s the same strategy used by most tech companies nowadays.
● Canceled my Pro sub today; The new “5-hour compute limit” is completely unusable. Excerpt:
They didn’t even bother sending an email about this massive contract change. I just wanted to use Thinking Mode for my usual deep-dive conversations on niche random topics or to have an ear but apparently, re-reading the chat context now costs a premium. I burned 50% of my entire 5-hour limit on a single 5 post response back and forth today.
Selected comments:
- 11 prompts, one chat; 74% used (the 5-hr limit).
- Claude has entered the chat.
- Claude is fucked. I can blow through my usage limits on Pro in about 5 minutes. It’s a joke and barely usable.
● I Tested the New Gemini Usage Limits on a Free Account:
I wondered how bad the new Gemini usage limits really are, so I asked ChatGPT to write a bunch of prompts for a single chat that would keep using the same context. I used my second free account for testing.
At the start of the experiment, my limits on this account were at 0% usage (both 5-hour and weekly).
After 5 Flash 3.5 prompts:
- 9% 5-hour
- 0% weekly
After one Pro Standard prompt in the same chat:
- 25% 5-hour
- 1% weekly
After one Deep Research request (Flash 3.5 in a new chat, because Gemini didn’t let me use the Pro model):
- 77% 5-hour
- 4% weekly
After one image generation in the first chat:
- 82% 5-hour
- 4% weekly
After one Canvas presentation with 15 slides in the same chat using the existing chat context:
- 88% 5-hour
- 4% weekly
Make your own conclusions from this. I just did this test out of curiosity.
Chat links:
Now that’s interesting. But the chats are in Russian, and I would never ask a chatbot such things. I use a chatbot to retrieve information, not to create concepts and documents for me. My homework is my homework. But as long as people use chatbots to create “one Canvas presentation with 15 slides”…
● Limits are bad, but the quality suffered even more.
In brief, Gemini failed to open a document because it wasn’t able to attach it correctly, but instead of admitting that it couldn’t see the new document, it tried to “guess” its content based on the previous discussion: “I made up specific points (such as 3.4.2 or 3.3 A(b)) that aren’t in your v7 contract at all. That was a huge mistake and a delusion on my part, for which I apologize. I shouldn’t have misled you like that.”
● This new Gemini update is ass:
I’m a been on Pro for more than 8 months, so when I saw the redesign, I was excited… at first. My excitement dropped a little when I saw the usage limit thing, but I thought it wouldn’t matter since, usually, with Pro, you can talk to Gemini for a pretty long time. Even if you hit the limit, it normally resets after a few minutes. But my excitement went from 100% to 0% after only like 7 minutes of actually using this update. Not only does Gemini somehow feel way dumber now, but I can’t even talk to it for more than 10 minutes before the usage limit runs out. And this is with PRO. That’s the part that really annoys me. I’m literally paying for the subscription, yet I feel more restricted than before. Genuinely why did Google do this?
Selected comments:
- I asked 3.5 a really simple question. I gave it two teams and asked how many games had each team played this season.
It got it wrong, completely hallucinating a European campaign for one of them.
So I can’t trust it at all.- I tried asking who the actor in an older film was and gave it all the information needed and quoted their lines. It came back with some woman… The actor was a guy…
- I voted with my wallet – canceled that crap in a heartbeat.
● Is it even a ‘Pro’ account if the token limit treats you like you’re on a free tier? 📉💀.
He claims that one prompt that resulted in a wrong answer used an entire 5-hr quota. Pro user.
Selected comment:
What was the prompt though? Or the wrong answer?
We’ve all got this tool in this sub, what are people doing?
Since the change I’ve been extensively using the light AF model on standard, 2% used. Not a single wrong answer. Mostly just web scrapes about wtf these rates actually mean… but still, only 2%…
I know people feel that they pay for Pro, so they should be able to use pro for everything, maximum thinking, but a lot of the time it’s completely unnecessary unless you’re coding something.
I think that’s why people are burning through it, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m just trying to figure out what exactly it is that costs the most, as it’s clear as mud from Google.
● Gemini 3.5 Flash usage limits testing:
Second picture: Prompting 3.5 FLASH EXTENDED THINKING with 359 lines of code (website) + the instruction to add 5 images (and gave it 5 urls of said images). It added 4% of my 5 hour limit with that single prompt.
Third picture: Same prompt in the same chat with the STANDARD THINKING and only difference being 5 different urls (same 359 line code as the original). It added another 6% to my 5 hour total.
I really don’t see what’s wrong with that. OK, 6% > 4%, but other than that…
● I don’t like the sound of this….
A screenshot that reads, “Pro is in high demand right now. Another model was used for this response. This didn’t count toward your limit.”
Yeah, I’ve seen several such reports. But hey, at least the response was token-free! 😉
I know this is the millionth post you have seen, but we must keep this running for them to realize what they have done is unacceptable. I got a 1 year subscription to Google AI Plus before the changes, and now I’m stuck with these limits because I can’t refund.
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 (litteraly 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. Keep in mind I have been using gemini for over a year and this is the first time I see this message.
The least they could do is just set a daily quota man, why every 5 hours?? I don’t use gemini while sleeping nor at some parts of the day, I sometimes have intense sessions and sometimes dont use gemini at all. Why you don’t leave it open to use it anytime.
Looks like they are trying to mimic Anthropic and get away with it.
Of course they do. Several comments included mention of cancelling subscriptions and regrets that yearly subscriptions can’t be refunded. Because, honestly, only those who paid for an entire year have lost something. Those paying per month have only lost whatever remained of their paid month, which now goes under the new limits.
I loved that guy who said he couldn’t use DeepSeek or any Chinese LLM because of censorship! My thoughts exactly 😉
I made some updates.
Update 4: From the atrocious hysteria on Reddit, a selection of 10 more threads.
A last update on Gemini: not everyone is angry at it! Here, have this one: Gemini Deep Research visiting 368 websites is INSANE, way above ChatGPT:
Two comments support the idea:
– “Gemini has indeed the best deep research agent around right now. Not surprisingly.”
– “It’s fucking fantastic and anyone saying otherwise simply hasn’t used it honestly.”
🤣 They killed ChatGPT! [r/ChatGPTPro] They just destroyed the Pro model with the new update:
Meanwhile, the NYT: How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race: “Despite its early stumbles, Google’s Gemini has leapfrogged ChatGPT in relevance and usefulness. Soon, it will be ubiquitous.”