Is Gemini Advanced Really Worth Paying For?

Google is charging ahead in the AI race, putting the full weight of its influence behind its Gemini chatbot. Not only is Gemini quickly being integrated into Google products like Gmail, Docs, Drive, and YouTube, but it will soon become the company's main voice assistant on phones and smart devices as the beloved Google Assistant is sent out to pasture. But AI development costs a truly staggering amount of money, so to recoup some of the development costs, Google is hiding some of the best Gemini features behind a paywall.

Gemini Advanced is the version of Google's flagship AI that can only be accessed by paying subscribers. It purports to offer a supercharged experience, with extra AI models, features, and more, and it's targeted at the most dedicated power users. For some, it may seem tempting, especially if you're heavily connected to the Google ecosystem. For example, if you own an Android device, especially a newer one, you may have Gemini as your built-in voice assistant, meaning that a Gemini Advanced subscription might be a way to unlock even more of your phone's potential.

I've been one of SlashGear's resident consumer AI experts for a while, putting this emerging technology to the test across a wide range of scenarios. After using Gemini Advanced for the past month on all my devices, I've gathered my thoughts  — the good, bad, and ugly  — to help you decide whether it's really worth paying for. Here's what you need to know before you spend your hard-earned cash on Google's AI subscription.

Gemini Advanced is part of Google's AI Premium subscription, which can be purchased through Google One. In addition to extra AI models, it comes with Google Drive storage, unlimited Magic Editor uses in Google Photos, extra features in Google Calendar and Google Meet, and 10% off on purchases in the Google Store (the company's hardware shop, not to be confused with its app store, Google Play Store). However, all non-Gemini benefits come with the much cheaper non-AI plans. Turning your non-AI plan into an AI Premium plan costs a significant amount more. For instance, going from a Premium 2 TB to AI Premium 2 TB takes you from $10 to $20. Certain new devices like the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 9 series also come with free extended trials of Gemini Advanced.

For that extra money, you get access to Gemini extensions in Gmail, Docs, and other Google products, and NotebookLM Plus. While writing this, Google released Gemini Live's camera and screen sharing features, which are limited to Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25 users, along with Gemini Advanced subscribers. Of course, you also get extra LLM capabilities. You'll get "expanded access" to Deep Research and Gemini 2.5 Pro, which includes experimental models and unreleased features. From a certain point of view, you're paying Google to beta test its models. What's more exciting is the ability to upload 1,500 pages of files, which lets you run Gemini prompts on entire books or other large documents, as well as the option to upload a code repository, a perk developers may find useful. At the time of this writing, both free and Advanced users have access to the same list of Gemini models. That means the differences are mostly under the hood.

There are currently no AI models exclusive to Gemini Advanced. Free and paid users have access to Gemini 2.0 Flash, 2.0 Flash Thinking , Deep Research, Personalization (experimental), and 2.5 Pro. However, Advanced subscribers still get an expanded context window of 1 million tokens for longer outputs and larger file uploads, and 2.5 Pro Deep Research.

To test the difference, I loaded up Gemini's newest model, 2.5 Pro, on both a free and paid account. (Side note: this model came out on March 25, and was immediately made public to paid and unpaid users, which defeats the purpose of paying extra for early access to new models.) As a baseline, I prompted, "Explain the difference between Gemini and Gemini Advanced." I got slightly different answers, and both falsely claimed that Advanced offers the now outdated 1.5 Pro model, with the free version making a chart to misinform me, while the paid version used bullet points to lie to me. On the upside, expanded file uploading does work. I was able to upload the full text of James Joyce's "Ulysses" into Gemini Advanced and ask questions based on it. When I tried the same with the free version, a message informed me that my uploads may be too big for the best results.

While writing this, Google also rolled out Gemini Live's camera and screen sharing feature, which lets you talk in real-time about what's on your screen or camera feed. Privacy concerns aside, it's cool and worked as advertised when I played with it. Yet, before this article could go live, it had already moved from a Gemini Advanced exclusive to free for all users.

Gemini itself might be the same whether or not you pay, at least at the time of this writing, but one feature the extra money will get you is Gemini integration into Google Workspace apps. In Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and so forth, Google has given Gemini Advanced subscribers integrated AI tools that promise to supercharge your workflow. So, how helpful is it?

Being a writer, I started first in Docs. There are three tools here: Help Me Write, Refine, and a document-wide Gemini chatbot. To test Refine, which rewrites things, I pulled up an old college paper that wasn't my best work. While Gemini's adjustments did make the prose less purple, they also made the essay's ideas less coherent and structured it with quotes from the source material at the start of each paragraph. These revisions would have earned me a worse score with a conventional grading rubric. The Help Me Write tool and Gemini panel worked just like main Gemini, not amazing but not terrible.

In Slides, Gemini will generate images or create slides from whole cloth. Below is what it came up with when I told it, "Create a slide to pitch Gemini Advanced to SlashGear readers." I have no idea why the robot looks like that, or why it takes up so much of the page. The bulleted copy is also strange, appearing to speak to the presenter rather than the audience. Gemini did a lot better on a second try, also below. Overall, Gemini Advanced tools in Google Workspace might be good for tooling around with ideas, but likely won't produce anything polished. Moreover, you could get many of the same results by opening regular Gemini in another tab.

Gemini Advanced also includes some extra Gmail goodies. Since Gmail is one of the most used email services on the planet, Gemini Advanced stands to benefit a great number of users, so let's explore what's on offer.

Gmail's Gemini integration mainly drafts emails. It does so about as well as it drafts documents in Docs, which is to say, well enough for emails that don't matter much. I told it, "My best friend's pet lizard was eaten by a raccoon. Please send my condolences." It offered me a very bare bones letter with none of the heartfelt warmth of emotion such a situation might call for. "Dear [Recipient Name], I am so sorry to hear that a raccoon ate your pet lizard. I know how much your pet meant to you, and I can only imagine how devastating this must be. Please accept my heartfelt condolences during this difficult time. Sincerely, Max." Next, I used one of Gemini's own suggestions, "An introduction to someone I met at the [AWP] conference." Insertion my own to give the LLM more to go on. Unfortunately, the output was lackluster. Read for yourself below, but I don't think that's worth $10 a month.

In the Gmail app for Android, there's also a Gemini button when I switch to the account that's subscribed to Advanced. I told it, "Summarize my most important unread emails," and it came back with summaries for three spammy marketing missives. Sorry, Google, but I'm not sure locking in my summer reservations for Denver's infamous Casa Bonita restaurant is really a priority of mine.

Lastly, Gemini Advanced offers some bulked up functionality in Google's AI-based research tool and podcast generator, NotebookLM. This could actually be extremely compelling if you're making heavy use of NotebookLM, since Google promises five times more audio overviews, notebooks, and sources, along with the ability to customize your notebooks by tuning the AI responses to suit the task at hand. However, although I do think it's a great app, I have never run into the limitations of free NotebookLM.

Ultimately, I cannot recommend Gemini Advanced until Google creates a compelling reason to spend your hard-earned cash. If you want an AI to write your emails or documents, just open Gemini, Copilot or ChatGPT in another tab. Want to summarize your emails? Free Gemini has a Gmail extension. The cheaper Google One subscriptions without Gemini Advanced come with tangible benefits like cloud storage. Where does that leave this subscription?

Even if you're an AI enthusiast, the very core of this subscription  — exclusive access to new AI models in Gemini itself   — straight up does not exist as of this writing. Gemini's newest, most advanced model, 2.5 Pro, did not go to Advanced subscribers first. Everyone can use it, even though it only just released at the end of March, probably because Google needs the training data more than it needs the subscription revenue. Imagine paying for a Costco membership only to discover the store has started letting everyone in for free. If you wouldn't put up with that, you shouldn't put up with this, and it's baffling that Google expects you to.