Thoughts Brewing Blog

AI Quick Tips 345: The free AI tool usage era might be over

Written by Damien Griffin | Jun 27, 2026 5:00:00 PM

It’s hard to tell but, based on how some of the popular AI tools have been doing things recently, I don’t think that they will be as “generous” with what they allow people to do with their AI tools.

Usage Limits Reducing

It’s been public knowledge for a while that most of the larger AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, etc.) have been losing massive amounts of money each year on AI tools (chatbots, agents, etc.) They seem to be slowly reducing the amount of access that they are giving people. This is consistent across free and paid accounts.

 

In some cases, Gemini app for example, they have new usage meters that show 5 hour limits and weekly limits.

Others will have daily, monthly, etc. limits that are now visible to the end user and enforced aggressively.

Anthropic has recently introduced a policy that either charges you extra (on top of your monthly subscription) or cancels your account if you use their models with non-Anthropic tools (a practice that used to be allowed).

 

People are, understandably, unhappy. The companies, also understandably, can’t keep bleeding money and, at some point, have to change their strategies.

 

“Some point” might be here.

If you notice that you have fewer allowances with AI tools (image generations, video generations, tool usage, prompts per period of time, etc.), you may have to change how you use the various tools (or pay more)

 

It might also be time to consider training so that you can learn how to use the tools more effectively…

 


 

Gemini Usage Limits Video: