Title: Google One: More storage and Google AI in one subscription

I’ve been paying $125/mo (promo pricing for the $250/mo tier) for Google’s top-tier “AI Ultra” subscription for about a month.

I signed up because I’m a power user. I manage large repos, build my own MCP tools, and live in the terminal. I assumed “Ultra” meant “Pro Developer.”

I was wrong. I downgraded to the $20/mo plan today. Here’s why other developers should probably avoid the top tier.

The “Double Pay” paradox

The subscription gives you:

The Web UI (Gemini Advanced)

30TB of storage

It gives you:

Zero API credits

If you use modern AI coding tools like Aider, Cursor, or your own CLI scripts, you still pay per-token for the API.

My bill:

$125/mo for the subscription

~$50/mo for API usage

Reality: I was effectively donating $125/mo to Google for a Web UI I barely use, because I work in the CLI.

The “official” CLI is broken

I tried to use the official gemini-cli to avoid API costs. It’s unusable for agentic work.

There’s a known, persistent bug where the CLI crashes with a 400 Bad Request error whenever the model attempts parallel tool calling (a standard model feature).

Error: “Please ensure that the number of function response parts is equal…”

These issues have been open for months:

Broken auth: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/11925

Parallel tool crash: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/13292

Shipping the org chart

The pricing only makes sense if you look at Google’s internal structure:

Google One wants to sell storage (30TB bundle)

Google Cloud wants to sell APIs (Vertex)

DeepMind wants to ship models

“AI Ultra” is a Franken-product stitched together by the storage team. There’s no billing concept for “individual developer who needs API credits,” so instead you’re forced to buy a data center’s worth of hard drives.

The feedback black hole

There’s no way to get this feedback to someone who can act on it. You can’t file a ticket that says “your pricing model ignores developers.” You just shout into a generic feedback form.

The fix: unbundle the intelligence

What’s needed is a real Developer Tier:

Give me: high API rate limits + API credits

Charge me: fairly for what I use

Until that exists, I’ve downgraded to the $20/mo plan and moved the rest of my AI budget to Anthropic.