Born as an enterprise-focused AI-based code generation tool, Gemini Code Assist now provides a free tier to individual developers with a limit of 6,000 code completions and 240 chat requests daily.
Google emphasizes that Gemini Code Assist offers the highest free usage limits. It is indeed true that one of the strongest competitors to Code Assist, GitHub Copilot, only gives up to 2,000 code completions free per month. AWS CodeWhisperer also provides a free tier for individuals, apparently with no limits on code completions, but it does not include a chat.
Another feature in Code Assist that Google underlines is its 128,000 token context size. This is significantly less than the 2 million tokens provided in the Standard and Enterprise editions but is still a compelling offer for a free-tier. Among the advantages of a larger token context are the capability to handle larger codebases, better code completions, and improved multi-file understanding.
However, it is important to understand that Gemini Code Assist’s free tier has several limitations compared to its Standard and Enterprise tiers. For example, the Enterprise tier includes customized code suggestions based on an organization’s private repositories, support for BigQuery, Apigee, and more. The free tier also does not include any form of IP indemnification, which aims to protect Code Assist from certain IP-related challenges.
Another important factor to keep in mind is that while Google is explicitly saying that Code Assist Standard and Enterprise do not use prompts or responses for training, this is not the case with its free tier, where Google will collect prompts, related code, generated responses according to its privacy policy.
Powered by Gemini 2.0, Code Assist uses a specific version of the model customized using a large number of real-world coding samples within the public domain, Google says. While this makes it capable of understanding and generating code in many programming languages, Google defined a subset of languages that it ensures work at best with the model, including C/C++, C#, Go, JavaScript, Python, Kotlin, Swift, and many more.
Code Assist is integrated by default in Google’s Cloud-based IDEs, including the Cloud Shell Editor and Cloud Workstations, and is supported through extensions in Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs.
