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Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

I love how fragmented Google's Gemini offerings are. I'm a Pro subscriber, but I now learn I should be a "Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise" user to get additional usage. I didn't even know that existed! As a run of the mill Google user I get a generous usage tier but paying them specifically for "Gemini" doesn't get me anything when it comes to "Gemini CLI". Delightful!

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Google suffers from Microsoft's issues: it has products for almost everything, but its confusing product messaging dilutes all the good things it does.

I like Gemini 2.5 Pro, too, and recently, I tried different AI products (including the Gemini Pro plan) because I wanted a good AI chat assistant for everyday use. But I also wanted to reduce my spending and have fewer subscriptions.

The Gemini Pro subscription is included with Google One, which is very convenient if you use Google Drive. But I already have an iCloud subscription tightly integrated with iOS, so switching to Drive and losing access to other iCloud functionality (like passwords) wasn’t in my plans.

Then there is the Gemini chat UI, which is light years behind the OpenAI ChatGPT client for macOS.

NotebookLM is good at summarizing documents, but the experience isn’t integrated with the Gemini chat, so it’s like constantly switching between Google products without a good integrated experience.

The result is that I end up paying a subscription to Raycast AI because the chat app is very well integrated with other Raycast functions, and I can try out models. I don’t get the latest model immediately, but it has an integrated experience with my workflow.

My point in this long description is that by being spread across many products, Google is losing on the UX side compared to OpenAI (for general tasks) or Anthropic (for coding). In just a few months, Google tried to catch up with v0 (Google Stitch), GH Copilot/Cursor (with that half-baked VSCode plugin), and now Claude Code. But all the attempts look like side-projects that will be killed soon.

> The Gemini Pro subscription is included with Google One

It's not in Basic, Standard or Premium.

It's in a new tier called "Google AI Pro" which I think is worth inclusion in your catalogue of product confusion.

Oh wait, there's even more tiers that for some reason can't be paid for annually. Weird... why not? "Google AI Ultra" and some others just called Premium again but now include AI. 9 tiers, 5 called Premium, 2 with AI in the name but 6 that include Gemini. What a mess.

It is bold to assume these products will even exist in a year

This is also tied to the internal promotion system within Google; you get promoted and rewarded for launching new products. Way less for maintenance.

Yes this is a well-known trope in HN about promotion-oriented launches, but this is just pure lack of proper messaging. I had a chat with one of Google's representatives, and they keep on saying "they do not have any information on this as of now".

This is less about internal systems and more about either incompetence or active sabotage.

It gets even more confusing! If you're on the "Premium" plans (i.e the the old standard "Google One" plans) and upgrade to >=5TB storage, your "Premium" plan starts including all the features of "Google AI Pro".

Tip: If you do annual billing for "Premium (5 TB)", you end up paying $21/month for 5TB of storage and the same AI features of "Google AI pro (2TB)"; which is only $1/month more than doing "Google AI Pro (2 TB)" (which only has monthly billing)

In my region Premium is actually $0.60 cheaper per month, with the additional 3TB storage, and that's before yearly billing. Confusing indeed.

> It's not in Basic, Standard or Premium.

For me, it shows all the Gemini stuff in Premium, even the 5TB version.

It's interesting to see the most recent internet archive snapshot from last week. Just 4 tiers. Basic, Standard, Premium which don't include Gemini. There is a fourth tier called "AI Premium" that does.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250611035305/https://one.googl...

I wonder what it will be next week.

I subscribed to Google One through the Google Photos iOS app because I wanted photos I took on my iPhone to be backed up to Google. When I switched to Android and went into Google One to increase my storage capacity in my Google account, I found that it was literally impossible, because the subscription was tied to my iCloud account. I even got on a line with Google Support about it and they told me yeah it's not even possible on their side to disconnect my Google One subscription from Apple. I had to wait for the iCloud subscription to Google One to end, and then I was able to go into Google One and increase my storage capacity.

The root problem here lies with Apple. It's so frustrating how they take a 30% cut for the privilege of being unable to actually have a relationship with your customers. Want to do a partial refund (or a refund at all)? Want to give one month free to an existing subscriber? Tough luck. Your users are Apple's customers, not yours.

I implemented Google One integration in an iOS app. This comment chain is accurate. Users want to pay with Apple (like other app subscriptions) but then your “account” is inside their payments world. Which is super confusing since users (rightly) think they are dealing with their Google account.

Sounds like the analysts and product owners didn't really want to solve this problem. Instead they ticked the boxes, got the bonuses, and the devs never questioned it and just implemented it for fear of being PIPed.

I'm sure there is technically nothing that stopped you from treating this "Pay with Apple" thing as just another payment method inside the google account, except maybe additional complexity and red-tape.

Seen this many times when PMs, POs, and Devs code by features instead of trying to actually solve something. I don't even want to know what mess of a database schema is behind this monstrosity.

Same as a shopping centre, clothing retailer, or any other non-bazaar marketplace with its own brand and transaction processing.

Apple is selling you a huge lucrative market.

Customers buy Apple’s curated marketplace.

Apple takes a cut for being in the middle and enabling all of this.

Believe me, I would never pay for most of the apps that I did pay for via Apple if it wasn’t via their marketplace and their consumer protections.

There is no counterfactual scenario where you and millions(!) of other ISVs get 100% of the same money without Apple.

What’s difficult to understand about these business relationships?

> Apple takes a cut for being in the middle and enabling all of this.

Enabling this like Ticketmaster enables selling tickets.

In ticketmaster's case I believe they give kickbacks and lucrative exclusive contracts with large venues, to squeeze smaller ones, maybe making whole tours use it but only kicking back to the biggest or select venues on the tour I think.

Apple sometimes does special deals and special rules with important providers, among many other tactics behind their moat. All single signons must also offer apple single sign-on, for instance, and they have even disabled access to customer accounts using their single sign-on for unrelated business disputes, though they walked it back in the big public example I'm aware of, the threat is there if you go against them in any way.

Amazon or Wallmart are much better analogies.

Ticketmaster is in no way comparable, because they gouge customers and provide no protections.

Someone in the music industry explained that both bands and venues like Ticketmaster because then Ticketmaster is the "bad guy" and the band can just shrug their shoulders and pretend to be the victim while profiting enormously from Ticketmaster's evil practices.

Lmao no.

Okay, all the app developers pull out of iOS because they're not actually useful, in fact they should be paying Apple!

How many people do you think would still buy iPhones if there are 0 apps on the app store? Lmaooo, it's almost like it's a co-operative relationship and Apple don't deserve a huge cut because it's the apps that sell their phones.

The problem is that other payment processors could emerge with the same trust profiles as Apple to facilitate this transaction.

I could see Stripe doing something like this. They protect the consumer and come down hard on the merchants.

Imagine them, and maybe a few other processors, competing for this business. The fee would probably drop below 30%. To a large degree, this is the sort of arrangement credit card processors already have between their merchants and consumers and that rate is single digit percentages. Not hard to imagine Visa or MasterCard running a SaaS transaction service for a 5-10% cut.

5% would be kinda high

I love Apple subscriptions.

No way for you to scam me or make it hard ro cancel. I can view them all in the apple account subscription view.

No tricks, no unexpected behaviour.

Same with Stripe, minus the 30% fee. Even better, if you accidentally let the renewal happen they will instantly refund in one-click.

This is exactly the kind of innovation Apple apologists don't realize they're missing out on in the walled garden. You could still have easy, centralized billing with all-in-one management and one-click cancellation, while paying 30% less for everything. Give the free market a chance.

This IS the free market ya dingus.

It's not a free market without meaningful choice.

You can't say a slave is free because their master is free to enslave them, and they're free to escape if they can. Sometimes you need rules to create real freedom.

That is the free market. That is why libertarians love the free market.

Idk if you just have a bone to pick with libertarians, but monopolized markets by definition are not free markets, regardless of how they arise

But the only way to have it centralized is to have it integrated in iOS.

Stripe already is a second place, non centralized, off platform.

I don't want to hunt down my predatory subscriptions in multiple places.

Why do you think that's the only way? Payment processors have long been able to differentiate recurring transactions from one-offs. Capital One has subscription management.

How the platform and the vendor split that money is irrelevant to me, and I’m not convinced this would become cheaper - evidently consumers are willing to pay the current price, so why wouldn’t the vendor just increase their profit?

In the same vein: Games don’t cost less on the epic store despite their lower (compared to Steam) either, so as an end user it makes no difference where I buy games.

https://expertbeacon.com/why-epic-games-is-cheaper-than-stea...

Maybe you like paying an extra 20%. That's your business. But fees like that affect the viability of lots of business ideas, including games. Having lower fees increases the pool of indie games.

Managing subscriptions in the apple account view, on stripe, on paypal and on whatever other platform wants their cut? No thanks.

Yeah, technically. But just everyone _normal_ just pays using Stripe often without even knowing about it. On the _walled garden_ all is so clear that my 70 years aunt is able to do it. And there is no exceptions to the rule: every subscription made through the App Store is there and it's cancellable...

30% is a robbery, and the confusion on the customer "ownership" is true, but it's not useful for the discussion to negate the advantage the _garden_ offers to the basic consumer

As Long As You Never Leave Us You Wouldn't Want To Leave Us Would You Why Would You Betray Us?

> or make it hard ro [sic] cancel

Unless you're trying to cancel the Apple ecosystem as a whole...

> Your users are Apple's customers, not yours.

At least on my side, thats fine / intended. As long as their is no useable regulations around unsub dark patterns, that type of firewall is what I want as a customer.

I bought my Google Photos subscription through the iOS app because it was cheaper than through Google directly. I have no idea why, but it was when I compared prices.

It is quite interesting how many big corporations eventually grow up to the same mess.

I had no idea I had a Gemini Pro sub included in One sub all this time. Thanks for the tip :)

Google is really bad at effective advertising.

There is a vscode extension that can basically be an agent but use gemini from the website which is cool.

But I found it to a little bit clunky and I guess I like the ui of google, I mean, the point is to get the point across. If you really hate the gemini ui, I am pretty sure that there is stylus extension which can beautify it or change the styles to your looking.

I guess I am an android user but still I understand your icloud subscription but if you're only choice as to why to not switch to google is passwords (but maybe you can mention more?), then for passwords, please try bitwarden, I found it to be really delightful.

The main reason not to migrate is that they cost the same, but I get more value from iCloud. You can probably say the same for Google One on Android; ecosystem retention seems to work well for Apple and Google.

I used 1Password in the past, and it’s possible to reconfigure most things to use another provider (passwords, app storage, etc.). AFAIK, you cannot reconfigure the full phone backup, which you must manually do without an iCloud storage quota. But why switch providers if I’m on the Apple ecosystem and the service is priced at the same price tiers? (I also use “Hide My Email” occasionally)

The only difference will be Gemini. However, my most significant percentage of AI usage is currently on desktops. The free tier of ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude is okay for use on mobile.

The UI part that I mentioned is this: Gemini is just a web app, which means that if you need to use AI from the selected text or the app you are using, you need to copy and paste or capture a screenshot. But ChatGPT macOS integration is much better. It’s a native app that you can summon with a key combination, and it can automatically put the active app/text in context. I evaluated multiple options, and in the end, the winner for me was Raycast AI, because their app UX is incredible, and you can integrate your prompt with existing tools very easily. With prompts like: “For each item in the current selection, add a todo in @Apple Reminders”, or things like “Use @firecrawl to scrap the current page, then create a table with all the product prices and use @finder to store a CSV file”. You can save the prompt in a preset and use it as a Raycast command. That UX change was like night and day regarding daily AI usage. I chose to pay for the Raycast subscription, even if it was more expensive than switching everything from iCloud to Google and paying for only one service.

My point in the parent post is that today, Google is the company most well-positioned to be the absolute leader of the AI space. However, unlike OpenAI, they don’t seem to care much about the UX (at least outside Android), but if you use the assistant to work every day, the difference a good chat UX does is huge.

>losing access to other iCloud functionality (like passwords) wasn’t in my plans.

you can export and import the passwords and you can sync your photos to google photos

Actually, that's the reason a lot of startups and solo developers prefer non-Google solutions, even though the quality of Gemini 2.5 Pro is insanely high. The Google Cloud Dashboard is a mess, and they haven't fixed it in years. They have Vertex that is supposed to host some of their models, but I don't understand what's the difference between that and their own cloud. And then you have two different APIs depending on the level of your project: This is literally the opposite of what we would expect from an AI provider where you start small and regardless of the scale of your project, you do not face obstacles. So essentially, Google has built an API solution that does not scale because as soon as your project gets bigger, you have to switch from the Google AI Studio API to the Vertex API. And I find it ridiculous because their OpenAI compatible API does not work all the time. And a lot of tools that rely on that actually don't work.

Google's AI offerings that should be simplified/consolidated:

- Jules vs Gemini CLI?

- Vertex API (requires a Google Cloud Account) vs Google AI Studio API

Also, since Vertex depends on Google Cloud, projects get more complicated because you have to modify these in your app [1]:

``` # Replace the `GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT` and `GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION` values # with appropriate values for your project. export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION=global export GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_VERTEXAI=True ```

[1]: https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/start/...

It took me a while but I think the difference between Vertex and Gemini APIs is that Vertex is meant for existing GCP users and Gemini API for everyone else. If you are already using GCP then Vertex API works like everything else there. If you are not, then Gemini API is much easier. But they really should spell it out, currently it's really confusing.

Also they should make it clearer which SDKs, documents, pricing, SLAs etc apply to each. I still get confused when I google up some detail and end up reading the wrong document.

The other difference is that reliability for the gemini api is garbage, whereas for vertex ai it is fantastic.

The key to running LLM services in prod is setting up Gemini in Vertex, Anthropic models on AWS Bedrock and OpenAI models on Azure. It's a completely different world in terms of uptime, latency and output performance.

Have you had any luck getting your Claude quota bumped on Bedrock? I tried working through AWS support but got nowhere. Gave up and used Vertex + Gemini

Does OpenAI on azure still have that insane latency for content filtering? Last time I checked it added a huge # to time to first token, making azure hosting for real time scenarios impractical.

Yes.

Unless you convince MS to let you at the "Provisioned Throughput" model. Which also requires being big enough for sales to listen to you.

Which would all be fine except some models like Imagen 4 only work on vertex.

> I think the difference between Vertex and Gemini APIs is that Vertex is meant for existing GCP users and Gemini API for everyone else

Nahh, not really - Vertex has a HUGE feature surface, and can run a ton of models and frameworks. Gemini happens to be one of them, but you could also run non-google LLMs, non LLM stuff, run notebooks against your dataset, manage data flow and storage, and and and…

Gemini is “just” an LLM.

Ex-googler here. Google shipped their org hierarchy here.

Vertex API is managed by Vertex team in Google Cloud. This is a production ready infrastructure that is SRE managed but usually one or two steps from the bleeding edge.

Gemini API, Jules etc are built by Google Labs. This is close to the bleeding edge but not as production ready.

At least a bunch of people got promotions for demonstrating scope via the release of a top-level AI product.

@sachinag is afk but wanted me to flag that he's on point for fixing the Cloud Dashboard - it's WIP!

You guys should try my AGI test.

It's easy, you just ask the best Google Model to create a script that outputs the number of API calls made to the Gemini API in a GCP account.

100% fail rate so far.

To be fair, no human can do this either.

I laughed very hard at this lol.

It's so insanely unintuitive.

ASI test then

Thanks Chris!

"The Google Cloud Dashboard is a mess, and they haven't fixed it in years." Tell me what you want, and I'll do my best to make it happen.

In the interim, I would also suggest checking out Cloud Hub - https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-hub/ - this is us really rethinking the level of abstraction to be higher than the base infrastructure. You can read more about the philosophy and approach here: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-developme...

One more suggestion: Please remove the need to make a project before we can use Gemini API. That seriously impedes our motivation in using Gemini for one-off scripts and proof-of-concept products where creating a project is overkill.

Ideally what I want is this: I google "gemini api" and that leads me to a page where I can login using my Google account and see the API settings. I create one and start using it right away. No extra wizardry, no multiple packages that must be installed, just the gemini package (no gauth!) and I should be good to go.

That will never happen. Just make a scrub project that is your misc-dev-drawer.

Totally fair. Yes, Google AI Studio [ https://aistudio.google.com ] lets you do this but Google Cloud doesn't at this time. That's super duper irritating, I know.

AFAIK you can very easily get an API key from AI studio without creating any cloud project

read my comment above. G Studio API is limited.

Ah I think I see based on the other comment but just to confirm - you want to use Vertex provided Gemini API endpoints without having to create a Google Cloud project. Is that correct? (I’m just trying to get as precise about the problem statement and what success looks like - that helps me figure out a path to the best solution.)

Appreciate the feedback!

Yes! The main pain points I've faced are:

1. There should be no need to create a project to use the Vertex Gemini API. I know Google AI Studio doesn't need a project, but that API is limited compared to Vertex API, which brings me to the next point.

2. There should be one unified API, not two! That'll help scale products with ease. Currently Google recommends using Google AI Studio API for simple projects and one-off scripts, and Vertex for "real" projects. No other competitor does this (look at OpenAI for instance).

3. The OpenAI compatibility layer isn't complete and doesn't support other Gemini features that only the Gemini API supports (e.g,. setting safety level).

4. Devs should need to install only one package to use Google Gemini. Please get rid of gauth.

5. The documentation on Gemini API is fragmented. Ironically, Googling "gemini api doc" doesn't lead to the page that discusses how to get started easily and quickly.

Creating an API key from AI Studio automatically creates a Google Cloud project in the background for you. You can see it when you're logged into the console or via `gcloud projects list`

It's similar to how a bunch of projects get created whenever you use Apps Scripts.

Ninjaing in here: Thanks for reading this!

I’m a small time GCP customer for five or six years, and relatively tech competent, and I had a very difficult time getting Gemini code set up yesterday with Vertex API keys; finally I had to use gcloud to login from the CLI in combination with clicking a link and doing web sign on from Gemini. This frustrated me, not least because I have API direct calls to Vertex Gemini working from Aider, although I could not tell you exactly what incantation I finally used to make it work. In particular it didn’t look to me like the Gemini code app uses something like dotenv? I don’t recall now; upshot - could get it to tell me I was logged in wrong / had an oauth2 error / needed a project id at various times, but no inference.

What I wanted: to be able to go to a simple page tied to a google login and generate named API keys that can be used from anywhere to query Gemini models with a SINGLE key and environment variable kept in a .env file. I would prefer to pre-fill the account that debits by API usage. For an example, you could sign up for Anthropic API, OpenAI API, OpenRouter to see their customer flows. They are extremely simple in comparison to getting a new account (or even an old one) in shape to do metered billing for Gemini inference.

I then want this API key to work, regardless of what gcloud “knows” about me — am I logged in to a GCP account? Don’t care. What’s my current “Project?” Don’t care. What’s the difference between Vertex and Gemini? Don’t care.

As I write this, I bet a startup could be launched just offering this as a wrapper. This is surprisingly painful!

Thanks again for all the work; looking forward to seeing more out of Gemini.

What's wrong with https://aistudio.google.com/app/u/1/apikey ?

https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/api-key?authuser=1

Well, originally what was wrong was that non-vertex customers got much lower limits and about twice the time to first token as vertex customers. So I used a vertex key setup. However, the cli had me in auth hell trying to connect up with vertex. Like literal spinning. So, thank you. I wiped my vertex environment variables and upped my gemini key level, and it mostly works now.

Glad to help! Also, in case it matters, the old "google-generativeai" libraries have now been replaced with "google-genai".

It's very hard to figure out what resource is incurring charges – and get to a page where you can press "Cancel" on that resource – from the Billing Page. I had to open a support ticket to shut down my Cloud Workstation because I simply couldn't find it in the labyrinth. I gave up and deleted my project.

I will say as someone who uses GCP as an enterprise user and AI Studio in personal work, I was also confused about what Google AI Studio actually was at first. I was trying to set up a fork of Open NotebookLM and I just blindly followed Cursor’s guidance on how to get a GOOGLE_API_KEY to run text embedding API calls. Seems that it just created a new project under my personal GCP account, but without billing set up. I think I’ve been successfully getting responses without billing but I don’t know when that will run out.. suppose I’ll get some kind of error response if that happens..

I think I get why AI Studio exists, seems it enables people to prototype AI apps while hiding the complexity of the GCP console, despite the fact that (I assume) most AI Studio api calls are routed through Vertex in some way. Maybe it’s just confusing precisely because I’ve used GCP before.

I just use gemini-pro via openrouter API. No painful clicking around on the cloud to find the billing history.

but you won't get the full API capabilities of Gemini (like setting the safety level).

Google is fumbling the bag so badly with the pricing.

Gemini 2.5 Pro is the best model I've used (even better than o3 IMO) and yet there's no simple Claude/Cursor like subscription to just get full access.

Nevermind Enterprise users too, where OpenAI has it locked up.

I wouldn't dream of thinking anyone has anything "locked up". Certainly not OpenAI which increasingly seems to be on an uphill battle against competitors (including Microsoft who even though they're a partner, are also a competitor) who have other inroads.

Not sure what you mean by "full access", as none of the providers offer unrestricted usage. Pro gets you 2.5 Pro with usage limits. Ultra gets you higher limits + deep think (edit: accidentally put research when I meant think where it spends more resources on an answer) + much more Veo 3 usage. And of course you can use the API usage-billed model.

The Gemini Pro subscription includes Deep Research and Veo 3; you don't need the pricey Ultra subscription: https://gemini.google/subscriptions/

Veo 3 is available only in some regions even for Pro users.

In the enterprise space, Microsoft’s pain is OpenAI’s gain. They are kicking butt.

In enterprises, Microsoft’s value proposition is that you’re leveraging all of the controls that you already have! Except… who is happy with the state of SharePoint governance?

You don’t have to be happy with it. If Microsoft already has all your data it’s much easier to trust them for AI than to add another entity into the equation, especially OpenAI.

> Google is fumbling the bag so badly with the pricing.

In certain areas, perhaps, but Google Workspace at $14/month not only gives you Gemini Pro, but 2 TB of storage, full privacy, email with a custom domain, and whatever else. College students get the AI pro plan for free. I recently looked over all the options for folks like me and my family. Google is obviously the right choice, and it's not particularly close.

And yet there were still some AI features that were unavailable to workspace users for a few months and you had to use a personal account. I think it's mostly fixed now but that was quite annoying since it was their main AI product (Gemini Studio or whatever, I don't remember for sure)

Only "NetworkLM" and "Chat with AI in the Gemini app" in the UK even with "Enterprise Plus". I assume that is not Pro.

I know they raised the price on our Google Workspace Standard subscriptions but don't really know what we got for that aside from Gemini integration into Google Drive etc. Does this mean I can use Gemini CLI using my Workspace entitlement? Do I get Code Assist or anything like that? (But Code Assist seems to be free on a personal G account...?)

Google is fumbling with the marketing/communication - when I look at their stuff I am unclear on what is even available and what I already have, so I can't form an opinion about the price!

> Does this mean I can use Gemini CLI using my Workspace entitlement?

No, you cannot use neither Gemini CLI nor Code Assist via Workspace — at least not at the moment. However, if you upgrade your Workspace plan, you can use Gemini Advanced via the Web or app interfaces.

I'm so confused.

Workspace (standard?) customer for over a decade.

Workspace users with the Business Standard plan have access to Gemini Advanced, which is Google’s AI offering via the Web interface and mobile apps. This does not include API usage, AI Studio, Gemini CLI, etc. — all of which are of course available, but must be paid separately or used in the free tier.

In the case of Gemini CLI, it seems Google does not even support Workspace accounts in the free tier. If you want to use Gemini CLI as a Workspace customer, you must pay separately for it via API billing (pay-as-you-go). Otherwise, the alternative is to login with a personal (non-Workspace) account and use the free tier.

Well, now I'm a mixture of disappointed and confused

I was wondering what Gemini Advanced is. I don't see any mention of a Gemini Advanced here, but there is a Gemini Pro and a Gemini Ultra: https://gemini.google/subscriptions/

I had gotten the impression that Workspace might entitle us to some API credits or something based on section 3A here where they describe how to authenticate with the API via your Workspace account https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/main/docs/c... . That document does explicitly mention "Gemini Code Assist for Workspace" but I think I saw another website from Google agreeing with you and saying you can't use it with a Workspace account currently.

Yeah, this is all a mess. Time to go back to bed for six months and just continue using whatever my corporate overlords have already handed to me

Gemini 2.5 pro in workspace was restricted to 32k tokens [0] - do you know if this is still the case?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleGeminiAI/comments/1jrynhk/war...

From what I can tell, that was a bug and it has been fixed. I regularly use data with much more than 32k tokens in Gemini with my Workspace account, and context window issues are not a thing anymore.

What does set Gemini via Workspace apart from other offerings like AI Studio is the nerfed output limit and safety filters. Also, I never got Gemini to ground replies in Google search, except when in Deep Research, or to execute code. Finally, Workspace users of Gemini either cannot keep their chat history, or have to keep the entire history for a predetermined period (deleting individual chats is not allowed).

I'm a workspace subscriber, I get 4-5 questions on Gemini Pro (via gemini.google.com ) before it tells me I'm out of quota and have to switch to flash.

(Update: Oh.. I'm only on business starter, I should be on business standard. need more business!)

Yeah, that starter plan is pretty useless for AI features. I guess it still gives you privacy.

> I guess it still gives you privacy.

Absolutely no offense but why do you (and a lot of people here) believe Google paid products gives you any privacy ?

I’m pretty sure even if they wanted to respect privacy of a subset of their users, they must have so much legacy code and data everywhere that they couldn’t even do it if they wanted to. And I’m not sure they’d want it anyway.

They're 'fumbling' because these models are extremely expensive to run. It's also why there's so many products and so much confusion across the whole industry.

An interesting thing is that Google AI offers are much more confusing than the OpenAI ones — despite the fact that ChatGPT models have one of the worst naming schemes in the industry. Google has confusing model names, plans, API tiers, and even interfaces (AI Studio, Gemini app, Gemini Web, Gemini API, Vertex, Google Cloud, Code Assist, etc.). More often than not, these things overlap with one another, ensuring minimal clarity and preventing widespread usage of Google’s models.

>Gemini 2.5 Pro is the best model

It's the second time I read this in this thread. May I ask why you think this is the case? And in which domains? I am very satisfied with 2.5 pro when it comes to philosophical/literary analysis, probably because of the super long context I can fill with whole books, and wanted to try Claude Code for the same purpose, but with folders, summaries, etc to make up for the shorter context length.

I've just found it to be the best in practice, especially for more complicated debugging with code.

But also for text review on posts, etc.

Before Claude had the edge with agentic coding at least, but now even that is slipping.

I think it's at least equal best at research math.

Just go on AI Studio?

Anthropic is the same. Unless it has changed within the last few months, you can subscribe to Claude but if you want to use Claude Code it'll come out of your "API usage" bucket which is billed separately than the subscription.

Some jerk has learned that we prefer CLI things and has come to the conclusion that we should therefore pay extra for them.

Workaround is to use their GUI with some MCPs but I dislike it because window navigation is just clunky compared to terminal multiplexer navigation.

This has changed actually, since this month you can use claude code if you have a cloud pro subscription.

Great news, thanks.

AFAIK, Claude code operates on your subscription, no? That's what this support page says

https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11145838-using-cla...

Could have changed recently. I'm not a user so I can't verify.

In recent research (relying on Claude so bear that in mind), connecting CC via Anthropic Console account / API key ends up being less expensive.

There's a log analyzer tool that will tell you how much the API costs are for your usage: https://ccusage.com

If you're doing anything more than toying around, this is not the case.

Using the API would have cost me $1200 this month, if I didn't have a subscription.

I'm a somewhat extensive user, but most of my coworkers are using $150-$400/month with the API.

less expensive than what? You can use CC on the $20 plan. If you're using the maximum of your $20 subscription usage every 4 hours every day, the equivalent API cost would be at least hundreds per month

This is simply not true. All personal paid packages include Claude Code now.

Are you using CC for your python framework?

In addition to others mentioning subscriptions being better in Claude Code, i wanted to compare the two so i tried to find a Claude Max equivalent license... i have no clue how. In their blog post they mention `Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise license` but they don't even link to it.. lol.

Some googling lands me to a guide: https://cloud.google.com/gemini/docs/discover/set-up-gemini#...

I stopped there because i don't want to signup i just wanted to review, but i don't have an admin panel or etc.

It feels insane to me that there's a readme on how to give them money. Claude's Max purchase was just as easy as Pro, fwiw.

I think it is pretty clear that these $20/subs are loss leaders, and really only meant to get regular people to really start leaning on LLMs. Once they are hooked, we will see what the actual price of using so much compute is. I would imagine right now they are pricing their APIs either at cost or slightly below.

Or they're planning on the next wave of optimized hardware cutting inference costs.

When using a single terminal Pro is good enough (even with a medium-large code base). When I started working with two terminals at two different issues at the same time, i’m reaching the credit limit.

I'm sure that there are power users who are using much more than $20 worth of compute, but there will also be many users who pay but barely use the service.

since its bundled with Google One storage, which most people (into Google's ecosystem) buy anyway, the price is actually less than 20

I would've thought "most" people would be firmly on the free tier, are there any stats to check how common it is? Personally I've had Gmail for 20 years, Android phones for 13 years, Home/chromecast devices but never thought about paying for Google One or any other services.

Do you have a pixel and/or use photos? That's how your quota really fills up

If you're storing photos in Google Photos, the free quota gets used up quickly

Sam Altman said they use about same amount of power as an oven. So at $0.2/kWh thats about 100kWh/4kW=25 hours of compute or a little over an hour every workday.

This is down voted I guess because the circumstances have changed - but boy is it still confusing. All these platforms have chat subscriptions, api pay-as-you-go, CLI subscriptions like "claude code" ... built-in offers via Github enterprise or Google Workspace enterprise ...

It's a frigg'n mess. Everyone at our little startup has spent time trying to understand what the actual offerings are; what the current set of entitlements are for different products; and what API keys might be tied to what entitlements.

I'm with __MatrixMan__ -- it's super confusing and needs some serious improvements in clarity.

And claude code can now be connected to either an API sub or a chat sub apparently.

I found out about this the hard way after blowing $200 in 2 days. /logout and start over and you will get the option to link to monthly pricing plan

Isn't that a bit like saying that gasoline should be sold as a fixed price subscription rather than a usage based scheme where long distance truckers pay more than someone driving < 100 miles per week?

A ChatBot is more like a fixed-price buffet where usage is ultimately human limited (even if the modest eaters are still subsidizing the hogs). An agentic system is going to consume resources in much more variable manner, depending on how it is being used.

> Some jerk has learned that we prefer CLI things and has come to the conclusion that we should therefore pay extra for them

Obviously these companies want you to increase the amount of their product you consume, but it seems odd to call that a jerk move! FWIW, Anthropic's stated motivation for Claude Code (which Gemini is now copying) was be agnostic to your choice of development tools since CLI access is pretty much ubiquitous, even inside IDEs. Whether it's the CLI-based design, the underlying model, or the specifics of what Claude Code is capable of, they seem to have got something right, and apparently usage internal to Anthropic skyrocketed just based on word of mouth.

Claude desktop editing files and running commands via the desktop commander MCP is pretty much equivalent functionality wise to Claude Code. I can set both of them to go, make tea, and come back to see that they're still cranking after modifying several files and running several commands.

It's just a UI difference.

These companies are all for-profit, regardless of what altruistic intent they are trying to spin. Free tier usage and fixed price buffets are obviously not where the profit is, so it's hard to blame them for usage-based pricing for their premium products targeting mass adoption.

There's also $300/mo AI ULTRA membership. It's interesting. Google One memberships even can't detail what "extra features" I can have, because it possibly changes every hour or so.

> There's also $300/mo AI ULTRA membership

Not if you're in EU though. Even though I have zero or less AI use so far, I tinker with it. I'm more than happy to pay $200+tax for Max 20x. I'd be happy to pay same-ish for Gemini Pro.. if I knew how and where to have Gemini CLI like I do with Claude code. I have Google One. WHERE DO I SIGN UP, HOW DO I PAY AND USE IT GOOGLE? Only thing I have managed so far is through openrouter via API and credits which would amount to thousands a month if I were to use it as such, which I won't do.

What I do now is occasionally I go to AI Studio and use it for free.

Maybe their products team is also just run by Gemini, and it's changing its mind every day?

I also just got the email for Gemini ultra and I couldn't even figure out what was being offered compared to pro outside of 30tb storage vs 2tb storage!

> Maybe their products team is also just run by Gemini, and it's changing its mind every day?

Never ascribe to AI, that which is capable of being borked by human PMs.

I actually had this exact same question when I read the docs, made an issue about it:

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/1427

I find it very interesting that the only way to reach Google support .... seems to be to file an issue in a competitors product (besides using X or whatever).

That's valuable feedback and we're taking it to heart.

I was having such a good time using Gemini 2.5 Pro I forgot that Google is generally incapable of sustaining a new product. I’ll try not to get used too attached to it.

You don't get API keys for that subscription because it's a flat monthly cost.

That's not a given, Anthropic recently added Claude CLI access to their $20/m "Pro" plan removing the need for a separate API key.

And they say our scale up is siloed. Leave it to google to show' em.

You’d think with all this AI tooling they'd be able to organize better, but I think that the AI Age will be a very messy one with messaging and content

> Delightful!

You clearly have never had the "pleasure" to work with a Google product manager.

Especially the kind that were hired in the last 15-ish years.

This type of situation is absolutely typical, and probably one of the more benign thing among the general blight they typically inflict on Google's product offering.

The cartesian product of pricing options X models is an effing nightmare to navigate.

The other day I was trying to figure out a cost estimate for Gemini 2.5 Pro but they don't have this in their pricing calculator - it just isn't there. Only endless tables with various model sizes and options which aren't explained.

I think Pro is for regular folks, not specifically for programmers.

I also have a pro subscription and wish I could get an API key with that with generous quota as well but pro is just for "consumers" using Gemini app I guess

I was just trying to figure out if I get anything as a pro user. Thank you, you answered my question.

This is very confusing how they post about this on X, you would think you get additional usage. Messaging is very confusing.

Google needs to package their products better. It's always been the case with them. GCP is confusing because you can't easily find their services.

Google does not care about users at all, ZERO, it is full of people are so fond of technology, they try something and soon move on to something else. I am using Google Cloud for work, and previously Google Mail , Google Map, and YouTube user, zero good experience.

They are horrendous about their product strategy and positioning.

How can I subscribe to this? From the comments here it sounds like it's NOT bundled into the Gemini Pro subscription, but into "Gemini Code Assist Standard".

I can't find any way to upgrade to a paid plan, is this even possible for individuals, or is it just "free or enterprise"?

/Edit: Okay I went through the Gemini docs. I found that in Google Cloud you can enable Gemini Code Assist Standard and Enterprise for the account

- Standard is $19.00/mo

- Enterprise is $45.00/mo

Difference between the 2 editions: https://cloud.google.com/products/gemini/pricing

/Edit2: Found the actual management screen: https://codeassist.google.com/overview

I had a conversation with Copilot about Copilot offerings. Here's what they told me:

If I Could Talk to Satya...

I'd say:

“Hey Satya, love the Copilots—but maybe we need a Copilot for Copilots to help people figure out which one they need!”

Then I had them print out a table of Copilot plans:

- Microsoft Copilot Free - Github Copilot Free - Github Copilot Pro - Github Copilot Pro+ - Microsoft Copilot Pro (can only be purchased for personal accounts) - Microsoft 365 Copilot (can't be used with personal accounts and can only be purchased by an organization)

I'd really like to hear your own personal perspective on the topic instead of a regurgitation of an LLM.

> instead of a regurgitation of an LLM

Copilot is stating the plans for its own services are confusing. Summarizing it as "regurgitation of an LLM" doesn't adequately capture the purpose of the post.

To be frank, no one here cares what copilot has to say on the matter.

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