I’ve been paying $125/mo (promo pricing for the $250/mo tier) for Google’s top-tier “AI Ultra” subscription for about a month. I signed up because I’m a power

I’ve been paying $125/mo (promo pricing for the $250/mo tier) for Google’s top-tier “AI Ultra” subscription for about a month. I signed up because I’m a power user. I manage large repos, build my own MCP tools, and live in the terminal. I assumed “Ultra” meant “Pro Developer.” I was wrong. I downgraded to the $20/mo plan today. Here’s why other developers should probably avoid the top tier. The “Double Pay” paradox The subscription gives you: The Web UI (Gemini Advanced) 30TB of storage It gives you: Zero API credits If you use modern AI coding tools like Aider, Cursor, or your own CLI scripts, you still pay per-token for the API. My bill: $125/mo for the subscription ~$50/mo for API usage Reality: I was effectively donating $125/mo to Google for a Web UI I barely use, because I work in the CLI. The “official” CLI is broken I tried to use the official gemini-cli to avoid API costs. It’s unusable for agentic work. There’s a known, persistent bug where the CLI crashes with a 400 Bad Request error whenever the model attempts parallel tool calling (a standard model feature). Error: “Please ensure that the number of function response parts is equal…” These issues have been open for months: Broken auth: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/11925 https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/11925 Parallel tool crash: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/13292 https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/13292 Shipping the org chart The pricing only makes sense if you look at Google’s internal structure: Google One wants to sell storage (30TB bundle) Google Cloud wants to sell APIs (Vertex) DeepMind wants to ship models “AI Ultra” is a Franken-product stitched together by the storage team. There’s no billing concept for “individual developer who needs API credits,” so instead you’re forced to buy a data center’s worth of hard drives. The feedback black hole There’s no way to get this feedback to someone who can act on it. You can’t file a ticket that says “your pricing model ignores developers.” You just shout into a generic feedback form. The fix: unbundle the intelligence What’s needed is a real Developer Tier: Give me: high API rate limits + API credits Charge me: fairly for what I use Until that exists, I’ve downgraded to the $20/mo plan and moved the rest of my AI budget to Anthropic.