Google has been making moves very frequently lately.
First, it teased Gemini 4 Argon, and at the time of the announcement, it was only available to the Fairwind group. However, from recent official messaging, it seems that some Ultra users should start to get access through a gradual rollout.
Then, on Antigravity, the long-unchanged third-party models Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.6 were all upgraded to the latest 5.5.
The community has been giving feedback about this for a long time, while the official side kept playing dumb and acting as if it hadn't heard. Now that a new model is about to launch, it finally deigned to lift a finger and replace them.
Then, the official help center published a change notice, adjusting model access permissions for different subscription tiers. The specific changes are as follows:
- Non-subscribers can only use the "Flash-Lite" model; currently, the highest they can use is "Flash 3.6."
- Plus subscribers can use the "Flash-Lite" and "Flash" models; this subscription starts at $4.99.
- Finally, Pro and Ultra can use all models, including "Pro"; the starting price is $19.99.
The above adjustments take effect on October 9. Actually, the overall impact is minor, because the standard limits are not actually changing: Plus is 2x that of non-subscribers, Pro is 4x, and Ultra is 5–20x Pro.
I'm more concerned about whether Gemini 4 Argon holds up after the update. Currently, Flash 3.8 is overall very generous with quota: it's fast and has ample quota.
If it can maintain this state after the upgrade, I'll be very satisfied.