Gemini Code Assist offers free tier for developers

Gemini Code Assist has introduced a free tier for individual developers, offering 6,000 code completions and 240 chat requests each day. This tool, initially designed for businesses, now aims to support individual programmers. Google highlights that Gemini Code Assist provides the highest free usage limits in its category. In comparison, GitHub Copilot offers only 2,000 code completions for free each month. AWS CodeWhisperer's free tier has no limits on code completions but lacks a chat feature. The Code Assist free tier includes a context size of 128,000 tokens. While this is smaller than the 2 million tokens available for paid users, it still allows for handling larger codebases and better understanding of multi-file projects. However, the free version has limitations compared to the Standard and Enterprise tiers. For example, paid tiers offer customized code suggestions from private repositories and additional support services. The free tier also does not include protections against intellectual property issues. It's important to note that Google collects data from the free tier for training purposes, unlike the paid versions where user prompts and responses are not used for this. Gemini Code Assist uses the Gemini 2.0 model, trained on a wide range of coding examples. It effectively understands and generates code in several programming languages, including C++, JavaScript, Python, and Swift. The tool is integrated into Google’s cloud-based IDEs and can also be used with Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs through extensions.