Google gives U.S. college students a year of AI Pro free, worth about $240

Google's back-to-school offer hands eligible U.S. college students 12 months of Google AI Pro, a plan it lists at $19.99 a month, as long as they claim it by Dec. 31, 2026; the roughly $240 figure is simply that rate times twelve.

Key points

• Expect an enrollment check at signup: Google's student-offer help page says SheerID handles it for the U.S. free year, using your school email address. The plan raises Gemini usage limits to four times the free tier, adds Gemini inside Gmail and Docs, and includes 5 TB of Google storage.
• A valid payment method is required to claim the offer, and Google's terms say the $19.99 monthly charge kicks in automatically once the year is up, so put a cancel-or-keep reminder on your calendar now.
• Outside the U.S., students in more than 140 markets get a free year of the cheaper Google AI Plus tier ($4.99 a month) instead, and in select markets Google is cutting up to 70 percent off a bundle of AI Pro and YouTube Premium.
• Separately, Google opened a student hub at gemini.google.com/students for study notebooks, flashcards and practice quizzes, and the same day started rolling out Deep Research in Gemini Live.

Why it matters

Penn State's AI Studio already gives students Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT models behind a campus login, according to the university's fall AI guide, but this offer is a personal account you keep for side projects and client work that sit outside university systems, and Google says the new student hub is landing on consumer accounts first with school-issued Google accounts to follow. The catch is the card on file: the free year turns into a $19.99-a-month subscription if you forget to cancel.

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