Will the Gemini 3.5 Pro API be available on the AI Studio Free Tier?

Gemini API
1

Hi. There are rumors that Gemini 3.5 Pro will be announced today or sometime next week. Many people, including myself, are wondering if we will be able to use this model on the API’s free tier. Pro models were removed from the free tier in December 2025, and no Pro model has been made available on it since then.

In my opinion, since current Gemini models are not quite at the same level as those from Anthropic, OpenAI, or even some Chinese companies, this model should at least be offered on the free tier to keep users engaged until Gemini 4 arrives.

Additionally, Meta recently introduced a very cheap version of Muse Spark 1.2, where user data is utilized for model training. I think this is a brilliant move. Google also needs data to push Gemini 4 to the top of the AI model rankings, and data collected from the free tier could really help with that.

2

Yes, that would be a good move on Google’s part, if, for example, under Google AI PRO they offered a PRO model with, say, 1000 RPD in exchange for data. If META gives me such capabilities for pennies, I use them. Overall, I would probably reach around 1T/day. Unfortunately, Google is unlikely to go for that.

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3

I completely agree. It’s ridiculous that an AI Pro subscription doesn’t affect API usage in any way. At the very least, they could offer AI Pro users some usage limits for the API.

Until a few months ago, I was using the Gemini CLI and getting great limits with my AI Pro subscription, but they deprecated it and replaced it with Antigravity CLI, which has ridiculous token limits and shares its quota with Antigravity.