Google Cuts Off Free Gemini Benefits: Pro Model No Longer Available, Accounts May Be Banned for Abuse
Google, known for its generosity towards free users in the AI field, can no longer tolerate the excessive exploitation of its services. It will soon restrict benefits, making the Pro model exclusive to paying subscribers.
This adjustment primarily affects Google's AI programming tool, Gemini CLI. Ryan J. Salva, Product Director, Senior Director of Developer Experience at Google, recently posted a service update announcement on GitHub, announcing three policy changes that will take effect on March 25th.
First, free users will no longer have access to the Pro model, and will be limited to using the Gemini Flash model.
To use the Pro model, you need to subscribe to a Google AI paid plan, with AI Pro starting at $19.99 per month and AI Ultra starting at $249.99 per month.
Second, traffic will be prioritized based on license type and account status, and some users may encounter capacity limits during peak hours.
The third change involves upgraded abuse detection measures, focusing on cracking down on the use of Gemini CLI OAuth authentication to access third-party software. Violating accounts will be flagged.
The reason for these policy adjustments may not be known to the average person, but in the programming industry, many methods of exploiting benefits have emerged due to Gemini CLI previously offering the Pro model for free. People registered numerous accounts and used reverse proxy techniques to allow a large number of third-party tools to obtain free quotas through OAuth authentication.
In fact, Google is not the only company tightening free benefits recently. OpenAI has also revoked free users' access to GPT-5.4 (primarily for programming scenarios).
Anthropic is even stricter, with particularly severe account bans, and not just for those exploiting benefits. Domestic developers may even be banned even if they pay for the service. Fortunately, they do offer refunds for bans, indicating either a complete hostility or simply not being greedy.