Google Just Cut AI Plus to $4.99 and Doubled Storage to 400GB

Google Just Cut AI Plus to $4.99 and Doubled Storage to 400GB

5 min readJune 10, 2026

Quick verdict

Google cut its AI Plus plan from $7.99 to $4.99 a month and doubled the included storage to 400GB. At the same time it shipped a stronger NotebookLM with agentic chat, and made Gemini 3.5 Flash the default in AI Mode for Search. The plan is now the cheapest paid AI tier from a major lab, less than a quarter of what ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro charge. The catch is the usual one: it is cheap because it is the entry tier, and the heavy reasoning models still sit behind the pricier Pro and Ultra plans.

What actually shipped

The headline is a price drop and a storage bump on the same plan. Google AI Plus goes from $7.99 to $4.99 a month, and the storage that comes with it goes from 200GB to 400GB. For anyone already paying for Google One storage, the AI features now ride along at a lower marginal cost.

  • Price: $4.99 a month, down from $7.99.
  • Storage: 400GB, up from 200GB.
  • NotebookLM: an upgrade with agentic chat, stronger reasoning, and more output formats for Ultra subscribers.
  • Search: a multimodal upgrade with Gemini 3.5 Flash as the new default model in AI Mode.

NotebookLM is the part worth watching. Agentic chat moves it from a document summarizer toward something that can take steps across your sources, and the better output formats make it more useful for turning a pile of PDFs into something you can actually share. The richest version of that is reserved for Ultra subscribers, so AI Plus buyers get the cheaper seat, not the full table.

On Search, swapping in Gemini 3.5 Flash as the default for AI Mode is the quiet but broad change. Flash models are tuned for speed and cost, which tells you how Google wants to serve AI answers at the scale of Search: fast, cheap, and good enough for most queries, with the heavier models held back for paying tiers.

Why it matters

This is a pricing move aimed straight at the $20-a-month wall that ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro have held for over a year. Google is betting that a $4.99 tier bundled with storage you might already want pulls in people who were never going to pay $20 for a chatbot. For a lot of casual users, that is the right bet.

The honest caveat is what $4.99 does not buy. The frontier reasoning models, the highest usage limits, and the best NotebookLM features live on Pro and Ultra. So the cheap plan is genuinely cheap for everyday Gemini and a bigger Drive, and it is not a replacement for a power user's setup. If you are mapping out what every tier costs right now, we keep that current in the 2026 AI subscription cost guide.

It also sharpens the question we keep coming back to: do you need a full-price subscription at all. If your real usage is light, a $4.99 plan or a free tier covers it, and the case for stacking $20 services gets weaker. We walk through where the paid tiers earn their keep and where they do not in free vs paid AI, and the broader cost trap in the AI subscription trap. If you want more than one model without paying three separate bills, that is the case we make in the best app for running multiple AI models.

Video: Google AI plans explained

This breaks down where AI Plus sits against the free, Pro, and Ultra tiers, so you can see what the $4.99 plan actually includes.

FAQ

How much does Google AI Plus cost now?

$4.99 a month, down from $7.99. The plan also now includes 400GB of storage, double the previous 200GB.

Does AI Plus get me Google's best AI models?

Not the top ones. AI Plus is the entry tier, so the frontier reasoning models, the highest limits, and the fullest NotebookLM features stay on the Pro and Ultra plans. AI Plus is aimed at everyday use plus extra storage.

Is $4.99 Google AI Plus better value than ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro?

For light users, yes, since it is less than a quarter of the $20 price and bundles storage you may already pay for. For heavy or coding-focused use you will hit the limits fast. If you want several models without three subscriptions, see the best app for running multiple AI models.

Sources

Further reading

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