Google is officially ending the era of free access to powerful AI models. In a new email to developers, the company announced that it will close free access to the PaLM API on August 15. In this context, it announced that it will switch users to paid Gemini APIs.

Google is shutting down the free PaLM API

PaLM API, which is used to create custom chatbots, was made free with the renewed Gemini earlier this year. In this context, developers could continue to use the PaLM model for free through the Google AI Studio platform.

With the August 15th shutdown decision, it will not be possible to access PaLM. Google aims to monetize these models by offering the Gemini API for a fee. It should be noted that OpenAI also shares the APIs of the GPT language model for a fee.

Google will direct PaLM API users to Gemini models through subscriptions on Google Cloud Platform. Pricing starts at $7 for 1 million tokens and goes up to $21 for the same number of outputs.

The paid APIs will not affect tools like Gemini. You will continue to have access to Google Gemini for free. Only those who develop their own chatbots using Google APIs will now have to pay.

This is bad news for many individual developers and small companies. It marks the end of free trials of Google’s most advanced AI capabilities. On the other hand, full access to Gemini will continue to be available through Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform.