Google has made its AI programming assistant Gemini Code Assist available for free to individual developers. The service offers up to 180,000 code completions per month and AI-powered code reviews on GitHub at no cost.
Built on Google's Gemini 2.0 language model but specifically tuned for programming tasks based on real-world applications, Gemini Code Assist for individuals works with Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs. The tool can complete code lines directly in the development environment, generate code from scratch, or explain code through a chatbot interface.
Unlike web-based chat interfaces such as ChatGPT or Claude, the direct IDE integration eliminates the need to copy and paste code snippets between windows. The assistant automatically considers existing code in context, making it more efficient for developers.
Video: Google
While Gemini Code Assist for individuals supports a context window of up to 128,000 tokens in chat mode, the full Gemini 2.0 model can process up to two million tokens. This limitation could create bottlenecks when working with larger professional codebases.
Language support and GitHub integration
Google has confirmed support for 22 widely used programming languages including HTML, Python, and R, though the AI can likely handle less common languages as well. However, as with most coding language models, the system may occasionally import outdated libraries or incorrectly name functions, making the official language support list somewhat less meaningful in practice.
On GitHub, Gemini Code Assist can detect stylistic issues and errors while suggesting code improvements. Teams can define custom style guides for code reviews by adding a special configuration file to their repository.
Availability and enterprise options
Developers need a Gmail account to sign up at codeassist.google. For those requiring additional features like productivity metrics, private repository support, or Google Cloud integrations, an Enterprise plan is available starting at $54 per month.
A recent Google Cloud study found that more than 75 percent of developers now use AI tools in their daily work. This trend has led to significant growth in the AI coding assistant market, with startup Anysphere's AI-enhanced VS Code fork, Cursor, becoming the fastest-growing SaaS product ever.
While developers have many coding assistants to choose from, Google aims to stand out by offering generous free usage limits to individual developers.
