Subscription plans
Your subscription plan is what you buy. It sets your Playground credit, your rate limits, how many API keys you can hold, and which models your API keys may call.
A separate concept — the model access tier — is a property of each model, not of you. Plans grant access to tiers. The two are easy to confuse, so this page keeps them apart.
Plans
| Plan | Price | Playground credit / period | Rate limit (tpm) | Max API keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Contact us | $0.50 | 12,000 | 3 |
| Enterprise | Contact us | $500.00 | 1,000,000 | Unlimited |
| Starter | $10.00 / month | $9.50 | 60,000 | 3 |
| Pro | $30.00 / month | $28.50 | 300,000 | 25 |
Plans are self-service: buy, upgrade or cancel from the Subscription page in the console. You do not need to contact an administrator.
What each plan can call
Playground and API keys have separate model access, and this catches people out:
| Plan | Models in Playground | Models your API keys can call |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free model only | Free model only |
| Starter | All public models | Free model only |
| Pro | All public models | Free + standard + advanced models |
| Enterprise | Everything | Everything |
So Starter is a Playground plan: you get the full model line-up in the browser, paid from your $9.50 Playground credit, but an API key issued on Starter can only call the free trial model. Calling paid models from the API starts at Pro.
The free trial model is gemini-3-flash-lite (billed at $0). Everything else is
a paid model.
Signup bonus: while promotional bonus remains in your wallet, paid models are temporarily unlocked so you can try them. When the bonus is used up the restriction returns — this is a trial, not a plan entitlement.
Model access tiers (background)
Each model declares the tier required to call it: FREE, PAID, TRUSTED,
ENTERPRISE, plus an INTERNAL_BETA marker that stays hidden from ordinary
users. Your plan grants a set of these tiers, separately for Playground and for
API keys — the table above is that mapping in plain language. Each model's tier
is shown on the Models overview.
Plan limits you will actually notice
- Rate limit (tpm) — tokens per minute. A single large request can exceed it
on its own: a video sent to the embeddings API is base64 (roughly 929 tokens
per KB), so video embedding effectively needs Pro or above. See the
429entry in Errors. - Per-request cost cap — a request that would cost more than the cap is refused before it runs.
- Max API keys — how many active keys you can hold at once.
Related
- Balance & usage — Playground credit vs API wallet
- Recharge
- Permissions & model scope