Google’s $4.99 AI Plus Plan Now Comes With Colab Perks, and Standalone Colab Pro Looks Shaky
Google AI plans from $4.99 a month now bundle premium Colab perks like priority GPU access. Here's who benefits and how to claim them.
In this article
Google’s cheapest AI subscription keeps getting harder to ignore. Starting this week, Google AI plans, which begin at $4.99 a month with AI Plus, now include premium perks for Google Colab, the browser-based platform people use to write and run Python and machine-learning code without owning a powerful computer.
For most Android owners who pay for Gemini, this will be a line item they never touch. For students, hobbyist developers and anyone who has ever stared at a Colab notebook waiting for a free GPU, it’s a genuinely useful freebie.
What you get, by plan
Google hasn’t published compute-unit numbers for each tier, but the split is clear. Paid Google AI plans get access to faster cloud hardware, developer tools and priority GPU and TPU access in Colab. AI Ultra adds premium GPU access and background execution, which lets a job keep running after you close the browser tab.
| Plan | Monthly price (USD) | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Plus | $4.99 | 400GB storage, higher Gemini limits, Colab faster hardware and priority GPU/TPU access |
| Google AI Pro | $9.99 | 5TB storage, Gemini Pro features, Colab faster hardware and priority GPU/TPU access |
| Google AI Ultra | $100–$200 | Top Gemini tier, Colab premium GPUs and background execution |
| Colab Pro (standalone) | $9.99 | Colab only |
| Colab Pro+ (standalone) | $49.99 | Colab only |
Ultra pricing reflects the $100 tier Google introduced at I/O 2026 and its top option, which dropped from $250 to $200 a month.
Why this makes AI Plus the plan to beat
AI Plus was already a strong value after Google cut it from $7.99 to $4.99 in June and doubled its storage from 200GB to 400GB. For that price you get twice the Gemini app usage limits, a 128,000-token context window, Daily Brief, scheduled actions, expanded NotebookLM limits, Proofread and AI Inbox in Gmail, plus Google Flow, AI Studio and Antigravity.
Now add Colab priority access on top. The awkward comparison is with standalone Colab Pro, which costs $9.99, twice AI Plus and the same as AI Pro. Google hasn’t said the bundled perks match a full Colab Pro compute allowance, so heavy users may still need it. But if you only paid for Colab Pro to skip the free-tier queue, you’re now paying for something your Google One plan may already cover.
How to turn on the Colab perks
- Make sure you’re signed into Colab with the same Google account that holds your AI subscription.
- Open Colab’s Colab paid products page and choose the option to upgrade through Google One.
- Confirm, then check Settings > Subscription in Colab to see the benefits applied.
A few catches: free trials don’t qualify, so you need to be on a paid plan. If you already pay for Colab separately, the compute units stack rather than replace each other. And the rollout covers Colab-supported countries gradually, so Google says it can take a few weeks for everything to appear.
The verdict
This isn’t a feature most people will notice on their phones. It is a sign of how Google plans to win the subscription fight: pile enough into a $4.99 plan that canceling feels like a loss. Right now, it’s working. If you pay for any Google AI plan, claim the Colab perks, even if you only open a notebook twice a year.
Sources: Android Authority, Android Headlines, 9to5Google. Photo by Zulfugar Karimov on Unsplash.
Sidharth Shankar
Sidharth Shankar is an editor at Android Captain. A computer science engineer with 7 years of experience in the technology field, he covers apps, AI features, wearables and hands-on how-to guides for Android users.
