ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Gemini’s family sharing could save you hundreds over ChatGPT.
- Bundled storage and YouTube Lite sweeten Google’s AI deal.
- The savings depend on your subscriptions and how you use AI.
Are you getting tired of all the AI fees everywhere? I certainly am. To be fair, I review AI products, so I have to pay the fees for most of the mainstream options. But still, $20/month here, $100/month there — it adds up.
I long hesitated to sign up for the $20/month AI Pro plan from Google for just that reason. In the early days, Gemini wasn’t all that great, and ChatGPT was holding its own. ChatGPT is still solid, but these days, particularly for chat-related work, Gemini is just as good.
Also: ChatGPT Plus vs. Google AI Pro: Same $20 price, very different perks
My family’s Google spend before AI Pro
To find out what you’re now spending, go to “Manage your Google account” under the picture of your head on Chrome or in Gmail. Then click on “Wallet & subscriptions.” Here are the services my wife uses:
She has Google One because she needs extra storage for her email.
Before I upgraded to AI Pro, I also had Google One, but I had a 100GB upgrade. I was spending $1.99/month and she was spending $2.99/month on storage, for a total of about five bucks a month.
The other big Google expense we have is the YouTube Premium Family Plan, which is $26.99/month. We get YouTube Premium primarily for ad-free videos.
If you add it up, before AI Pro, we were spending about $32/month on storage and ad-free YouTube.
For the record, we also have two Google Workspace accounts, but those are for our companies. I’m not counting them in this personal analysis. They’re completely separate accounts.
Adding in AI Pro
AI Pro is another $20/month. It comes with a bunch of perks, including 5TB of storage and YouTube Premium Lite. Here’s where the accounting starts to get interesting.
Right away, as soon as I signed up for AI Pro, my $1.99 storage fee went away. So, AI Pro was essentially costing me an extra $18/month, not $20.
My wife Denise, however, is still spending $2.99/month on storage, and we’re still spending on YouTube Premium Family. Google did not convert my account to YouTube Premium Lite, as you can see.
This is where my Google spend was as I started writing this article. But when I wrote the Gemini vs. ChatGPT article last week, I found out that AI Pro has a family sharing feature. This is what could potentially save us (and you) a lot of money.
Enabling family sharing
We’ll start by turning on family sharing and then look at how we might save on some of the fees we’re paying through AI Pro. Family settings are available under Manage my account→Family.
As you can see, Denise and Pixel are in my account. We can apply parental controls for Pixel (our 8-pound Yorkipoo), so that he doesn’t watch too many cat videos. He is deeply offended by cats (and dogs, and horses) on screen, so keeping him to a supervised plan makes sense. To be honest, I have no idea why we originally created a profile for our little dog. But there it is.
Also: I tested Gemini Spark – another Google AI fail, or its next dark horse?
Notice the next two sections. First, there’s a Start sharing option for AI Pro, which is currently off. You’ll also notice that our YouTube Premium plan is set up for families. We’ll be playing with both before this article ends.
You can have a total of six people in a family. We’re not really concerned about Pixel’s email storage, ’cause he’s a dog. For us, any savings we can find will be for two people. If you have a bigger family, you might be able to save even more.
So, let’s start sharing. To do that, click the Start sharing button.
There’s me, presumably in the middle of a family group. But instead of pictures of my family members, for placeholders, it’s using photos of real people I don’t know and have never met. Why? I guess someone at Google must have thought using photos of randos was a good idea.
Also: How to identify an AI image: 6 hidden signs it’s fake – and my go-to free detectors
I know it’s just a screenshot, but it reminds me of all those science fiction programs where the character suddenly finds himself in a completely new family dynamic and lives a whole life inside that virtual world. Weird.
In any case, press Start sharing membership.
Canceling the extra storage plan
Going back to Denise’s Google Account page, it now shows that she has the Pro plan. To verify that she has access to the 5TB of shared storage, I clicked the AI Pro Plan button on the accounts page. This screen shows that she has both the 5TB storage allocation and the 200GB subscription.
You’d think Google would cancel the 200GB plan if the 5TB plan were active. But no. To cancel the redundant plan, you have to go back to the Google Account page. This time, clicking into “Wallet & subscriptions,” it still shows that she is subscribed to the 200GB Google One plan. Clicking on that option provides the payment pop-up. The next step is for her to cancel her subscription.
Clicking that results in this cancel warning.
We’ve already verified that AI Pro is providing 5TB, so the next step is to confirm the cancellation. Once this subscription period completes on Nov. 10, we’ll no longer be paying that $3/month fee.
YouTube Premium
Now, let’s talk about YouTube Premium. We’ve been paying for this in order to eliminate the ads, but it’s not cheap. It was much less expensive a few years ago, but now costs $27 per month. Interestingly, there are two versions of YouTube Premium: the full plan and YouTube Premium Lite.
Also: I was overpaying for YouTube Premium for months without realizing it
YouTube Premium includes ad-free videos, ad-free music videos, YouTube Music Premium (their Spotify equivalent), offline video downloads, and background playback. The Lite version eliminates the ad-free music videos and YouTube Music Premium. We haven’t really used YouTube Music at all.
We do sometimes play music videos, but for substantial monetary savings, we can probably watch an ad or two. But exactly what constitutes a music video is a bit vague. The latest Taylor Swift release would obviously be considered a music video for ad revenue realization. The AI-generated musical numbers featuring animated AI Star Trek characters, on the other hand, are probably not going to be subject to ads.
Still, there’s a huge middle ground. What about indie music hits or highly produced religious music videos? For that, we’ll need to crowd-nces in the comments below
Pricing is interesting. For one person, YouTube Premium is $16/month. YouTube Premium Lite is $9/month. YouTube Premium has a family plan (which is what we subscribe to), but Premium Lite does not. We’ve had YouTube Premium for years, but the Lite plan was only introduced last year.
Technically, since we bought Premium for the ad-free video features, YouTube Premium Lite would do just as well for us. And yeah, we could have downgraded to two Premium Lite plans and still saved $11/month. But we didn’t. Until now.
The Gemini AI Pro plan comes with YouTube Premium Lite, but only for the main account (mine). Since all I want from YouTube Premium is what comes with Lite, it makes sense for me to cancel the family Premium plan and pull back that $27.
Also: How I made a paid Mac app in 11 days with Claude – without writing a single line of code
The only gotcha is that Denise would lose her YouTube Premium ad-free benefits. So this becomes a two-step process: cancel the YouTube Premium Family plan and then subscribe Denise to YouTube Premium Lite. Our monthly spend for YouTube ad-free will drop from $27/month to $9/month.
I went ahead and canceled and got this very interesting screen. As you can see, I’ve been a Premium subscriber. I’ve watched more than 3,000 hours(!) of YouTube video since 2020, but listened to exactly 6 minutes of ad-free music and watched 3 music videos. So downgrading and losing those features is definitely no big deal.
Final accounting
Let’s look at the numbers. Before signing up for AI Pro, we were spending $32 ($27 + $3 + $2) per month, or $384 per year, and that was without paid-tier AI. Had we downgraded earlier to YouTube Premium Lite, we would instead have been paying $23 ($9 + $9 + $3 + $2) per month, or $276 per year, still without paid-tier AI.
The bottom line is pretty impressive. By signing up for AI Pro and doing some subscription maintenance, we’ll save $144 per year. Even if we had already been using the cheaper YouTube Premium Lite plan, we would still be saving $36 per year.
So, essentially, we’re getting paid-tier AI for free and saving either $36 or $144 per year, depending on how you add it up. It’s convoluted as all heck, but the benefits are a no-brainer.
Now, let’s look at this compared to ChatGPT. We pay $40/month total for ChatGPT ($20/month each). That’s $480 per year for two AI chatbot subscriptions with agentic features. Depending on your use case, you may or may not care about the agentic features.
Also: Give AI ‘stuff nobody wants to do’ – and 4 other ways to use agents more effectively at work
As we found out in my recent review, Gemini’s agentic capabilities aren’t ready for prime time. If you’re really using ChatGPT’s agentic features, this cost/benefit analysis doesn’t apply to you. Because I review AIs, I use all the agentic capabilities. I’d need to have ChatGPT just for testing anyway. But a normal family like mine could save hundreds per year opting for Gemini AI Pro instead.
If you’re just using AI as a chatbot, you could spend a total of $240 per year for your entire family of up to six people to have access to AI capabilities (plus the other perks we’ve been discussing) or $240 x [the number of members of your family] per year to get similar AI capabilities and none of the other goodies with ChatGPT alone.
My recommendation stands (and I’ll raise you a family plan). If you’re buying a paid-tier AI plan for chatbot use only, the far better deal compared to ChatGPT is Gemini AI Pro. No contest.
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe tomy weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at@DavidGewirtz, on Facebook atFacebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram atInstagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at@DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube atYouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
