What Google AI for Small Business Actually Costs

Google AI for small business is cheaper than most owners expect. The free Gemini app costs nothing, a single paid seat is about £15 a month, and the Google Business Profile that gets you found by AI is free forever. The real cost is not the software. It is your time, or the price of paying someone to do it for you.

Here is what the numbers actually look like right now, and where the hidden costs hide.

The free tier: £0, and it does more than you think

Start here. You do not need to pay anything to test whether this is useful.

The free Gemini tier costs $0 and runs at gemini.google.com plus the Gemini mobile apps. You get Gemini 3.6 Flash for general chat, a daily allotment of the stronger Pro model for harder reasoning, image generation, up to five Deep Research reports per month, and voice mode. No card, no subscription.

The catch is limits, not missing features. The Gemini app uses compute-based usage limits. Free users get standard limits you can track at gemini.google.com/usage, and these factor in the complexity of your prompt, the models you use, and the length of your chat. Your limit refreshes every 5 hours until you hit your weekly cap.

For a plumber drafting a few emails a day or a salon writing a month of social posts in one sitting, the free tier is often enough to prove the point before you spend a penny.

The entry price: about £15 a month for one seat

When you start hitting those free limits, you pay for one assistant. Do not buy three.

Google's consumer AI plans (formerly Gemini Advanced) are now Google AI: AI Plus ($7.99), AI Pro ($19.99), and AI Ultra ($99.99 / $199.99). In pounds, AI Plus is roughly £6 a month and AI Pro roughly £15.

Which one? AI Plus at $7.99 is the cheapest way off the free tier, giving you higher limits and more storage. If you use Gmail or Docs, Google AI Pro at $19.99 is arguably the best-value AI subscription, the same price as ChatGPT Plus but with 5 TB of storage and deep Workspace integration.

One-line rule: if you only chat with the AI in a browser, AI Plus is fine. If you want it drafting inside your Gmail and Docs all day, pay for AI Pro.

The Workspace route: Gemini baked into your email

If you already pay for business email through Google Workspace, the AI is now included. You do not buy it separately.

Gemini is now included free in Google Workspace Business Standard, Plus, and Enterprise plans, with limited access on Business Starter. The old standalone Gemini Business ($20/user/month) and Gemini Enterprise ($30/user/month) add-ons no longer exist.

The current prices, on annual billing: Business Starter is $7 per user per month, Business Standard is $14, and Business Plus is $22. Flexible monthly billing costs about 20 per cent more, at roughly $8.40, $16.80 and $26.40. Those were correct in July 2026, and Google moves them, so check the Workspace pricing page before you commit.

Watch this trap. Business Starter gets Limited Gemini (side-panel access, capped prompts), while Business Standard, Plus, and Enterprise get full Gemini across Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, and Meet. So if you are on Starter and want the AI properly working inside your documents, you have to move up to Standard, which is where the real jump in your bill comes from.

One more thing to know before you commit annually. You pay for AI for everyone on a plan, whether they use it or not. There's no per-user toggle on the cost. For a five-person team, that adds up.

The free tool that matters most: Google Business Profile

This is the one to do first, and it costs nothing. A Google Business Profile is free, $0 to create, $0 to verify, $0 to manage, with no subscription and no premium tier. You pay Google only for optional Google Ads or Local Services Ads.

Why it matters more than ever: Google's AI now answers many local searches directly, and your profile is what it reads to decide whether to name you. Your Google Business Profile is the single most important data source Google AI uses to describe your business in local queries.

The shift is real. A July 2026 analysis reported by Search Engine Journal, based on a Whitespark study, found AI Overviews appear in 68% of local searches, versus just 39% for the traditional local pack. Getting named inside that answer is the new goal.

Ignore the scam calls. Some companies cold-call businesses claiming the listing will be removed unless a fee is paid, or that they are Google offering verification for a charge. They are not. The profile is free.

Worked example: what a plumber actually pays

Say you are a one-van plumber in Leeds. Here is a realistic monthly bill.

• Google Business Profile: £0. You fill in every field, add your services with price ranges, and post updates.
• One AI Pro seat: about £15 a month, drafting your quotes, follow-up emails and social posts inside Gmail and Docs.
• Everything else to start: £0.

That is roughly £15 a month, plus a few hours of your time setting it up.

Now the lever that wins jobs. Price and cost queries trigger AI Overviews more than 80% of the time, and most local businesses refuse to answer them. If you don't answer the "how much does this cost" question, AI will find someone who does, and that someone gets the citation, the traffic, and the call.

So you use your £15 assistant to write one honest page: "How much does it cost to replace a boiler in Leeds?" You don't have to publish fixed rates. Give realistic ranges and then explain the variables that drive the price up or down. That single page is how the free profile and the £15 seat start earning their keep.

The hidden costs nobody mentions

The subscription is the small number. Here is where money and time actually leak.

• **Annual lock-in.** Multiple users report being locked into annual plans that are non-refundable even when the product fails to meet expectations. Start monthly, prove it works, then switch to annual to save.
• **Paying per idle seat.** On Workspace, everyone on the plan is charged for AI whether they touch it or not. For a team, price this before you commit.
• **Heavy usage add-ons.** Above the bundled tier sits the AI Expanded Access add-on: higher usage limits and more image and video generation. Google publishes no list price, but third-party reports put it around $20 per user per month. Most small businesses never need this.
• **Your time.** The Business Profile is free, but while free in dollars, DIY management costs you time, and keeping up with Google's evolving features can feel like a part-time job.

Do it yourself or pay someone: the honest comparison

DIY costs you hours, not pounds. DIY is free but requires 5 to 10 hours of work per month. If you enjoy this and have the evenings, do it yourself. The free tier plus one £15 seat covers almost everything.

Paying someone buys back that time. Professional Business Profile management ranges from $125 to $400 a month per location, with setup fees typically $300 to $500 for a full audit and optimisation.

One-line rule: if the hours you would spend are worth more than £150 a month to your business, and you would rather be on the tools or with customers, pay someone. If you are quiet and want to learn the skill, do it yourself for the price of one seat.

A note on NotebookLM, which is worth knowing about because it is free and genuinely useful for turning your own documents into a knowledge assistant. NotebookLM is free: 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, 50 chats a day. You would only pay for it as part of a Google AI plan you were buying anyway.

What to do next

1. **Claim and complete your Google Business Profile this week.** It is free. Fill in every field, add your services with price ranges, and post an update. This is the single biggest free lever for getting found by Google's AI. 2. **Test Gemini on the free tier for one real job.** Draft a month of social posts or a "how much does it cost" page for your top service. Only pay for a seat once you actually hit the limits. 3. **If you go paid, start monthly, not annual.** Pick AI Plus at about £6 for browser use, or AI Pro at about £15 if you want it inside Gmail and Docs. Prove it saves you hours first, then switch to annual to save.

If you would rather work through this with other owners doing the same thing, that is what the AIBL Club is for. You keep the £15-a-month setup and skip the guesswork.

The tools are cheap. The value is the jobs you win and the hours you get back. Spend on the outcome, not the tool zoo.

Keep reading