Google rolls out free version of Gemini Code Assist for individuals

Google is rolling out a free version of Gemini Code Assist, its tool for code completion, code generation, and code chat, with the aim of helping individual developers improve their productivity.

The free version, now available globally as a public preview, is called Gemini Code Assist for individuals, and is powered by the Gemini 2.0 model.

Analysts see the tool as offering developers low-cost learning opportunities.

“The new offering will help individual developers accelerate their learning and experimentation and thereby enhance productivity and code quality,” said Ritu Jyoti, general manager of research at IDC.

Amalgam Insights’ chief analyst Hyoun Park said that coding at all levels is becoming an AI enhanced process, as tools such as Gemini Code Assist accelerate access to code libraries and cookie-cutter code that is often used in applications.

David Nicholson, chief research officer at The Futurum Group, sees truly enormous potential for services like this: “The free version allows developers to enjoy independence to create what might become the first ‘solocorn’ — a single human entity backed by AI achieving a billion dollar valuation.”

Practically unlimited code completions?

Google said that the free version supports all programming languages in the public domain and was fine-tuned through analysis of a large number of real-world coding use cases.

It said that the limit of 180,000 code completions per month is so high that even most dedicated professional developers would be hard-pressed to exceed it.

In contrast, tools such as GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q Developer, offer just 2,000 and 1,000 free code completions per month.

Google’s new offering also includes a code review option via the public preview version of Gemini Code Assist for GitHub. It will provide AI-powered code reviews for both public and private repositories, Google said.

Support for JetBrains, Visual Studio Code

Like the enterprise offering, Gemini Code Assist for individuals supports IDEs (integrated development environments) such as Visual Studio Code, JetBrains while also supporting Firebase and Android Studio.

The chat capability of Gemini Code Assist for individuals supports up to 128,000 input tokens, which Google said should enable developers to help the tool gain an understanding of local codebases by uploading large files.

The chat feature also supports a variety of (human) languages.

Individual developers can sign up for the service via a personal Gmail account without the need for a credit card, Google said.

A necessary skill for developers?

Although there is a growing sentiment among senior developers that AI-powered coding assistants such as Gemini Code Assist are stifling innovation, analysts said that learning how to work with these assistants are becoming a necessary skill for developers.

“Getting plugged into this ecosystem will be a critical enabler of the future career for developers,” said IDC’s Jyoti.

“Developers who can work efficiently with the AI powered tools, can potentially iterate faster and deliver better products and experiences,” Jyoti explained, adding that this will become a key differentiator when enterprises are looking to hire developers.

Why is Google offering Gemini Code Assist for individuals for free?

Analysts said that Google is offering Gemini Code Assist for individuals for free as a seeding tactic.

“This seeding tactic is very similar to what it did with its GSuite,” said Futurum’s Nicholson.

Separately, Amalgam’s Park pointed out that this also could be Google’s way of reaching its goal of getting 500 million users on Gemini by the end of the year.

Reaching the goal is especially important for Google as it will help capture a part of an already competitive market, Park explained, adding that the battle between coding assistants is massive right now with competitors including Anysphere Cursor, Codeium, GitHub Copilot, and Amazon Q Developer joining the fray.

IDC’s Ritu also saw this as a customer acquisition play.

“Google is trying to democratize access and create stickiness for its suite of tools and ecosystem as it prepares for the agentic AI disruption. Please note that software engineering will be redefined in the era of Agentic AI,” Jyoti said.

“By offering it for free, it can learn more and improve its performance and hopefully convert more of the individual users to enterprise customers of its current and future platform,” Jyoti added.