Google is transitioning Gemini Notebook from fixed daily quotas to a flexible, performance-based usage budget starting September 2, 2026. In the future, prompt length, number of sources, and utilized functions will be decisive instead of simple retrieval counts, and the credit will renew every five hours instead of once daily. The change initially affects personal accounts on web and mobile devices.
Computational Effort Replaces Fixed Retrieval Counts
Until now, Gemini Notebook only counted how often users retrieved functions like summaries or notes throughout the day. As Google announced in a blog post, the limit will now be based on the actual computational effort of a request: a short comment on a single source will cost less from the budget than a long conversation about a large document package. The credit replenishes every five hours, no longer just once a day – those who exhaust their budget in the morning can continue working by the afternoon, according to Google. A display below generated content shows the expected consumption of an action before it is executed. If an account approaches the limit, the application will display a warning with the exact time of the next replenishment. Once the limit is reached, Gemini Notebook suggests alternative, less computationally intensive outputs or postpones resource-intensive content like video overviews and slide sets to a later time – the application will then notify when the result is available.
Paid Plans Receive Significantly More Capacity
The amount of budget an account receives depends on the chosen plan. According to 9to5Google, free accounts receive the base value, the Google AI Plus subscription about double that, and Google AI Pro four times that; for Google AI Ultra, the range varies from five to twenty times depending on the variant. Google does not provide official figures for the exact multipliers – the values are independently unverified and come from observations of the application. In Germany, Google AI Plus currently costs 4.99 euros per month, Google AI Pro 21.99 euros, and Google AI Ultra between 100 and 220 euros depending on the tier. Google only recently expanded Gemini Notebook at the end of August with the Expert Intelligence feature, which integrates purchased e-books from Google Play Books. Android Police also confirms the start date of September 2, without reporting any criticism or issues from users so far. Whether and when the new limits will also apply to business accounts via Google Workspace has not yet been communicated by Google.
It will be crucial whether heavy users can work more predictably with the more granular budget than with the previous daily limit, or whether unpredictable computational costs per request will cause uncertainty. Google has already introduced similar quota models in the Gemini app; whether and when Workspace business accounts will follow remains open for now.
