Google Cloud is rolling out free Gemini AI coding and code review tools to software developers across the globe.

The tech giant has announced the public preview of Gemini Code Assist for individuals and Gemini Code Assist for GitHub.

According to Google, this launch aims to enable anyone – from students working on academic projects to startup developers testing new ideas – to enhance productivity and code quality without worrying about cost or restrictive usage limits.

Gemini Code Assist for individuals offers expansive functionality powered by a tailored version of Google’s powerful Gemini 2.0 model. Gemini Code Assist supports all programming languages in the public domain and is optimised to serve users across a wide range of daily coding challenges.

More impressively, Gemini Code Assist ensures practically unlimited capacity—offering 180,000 code completions per month for free. This, Google highlights, is 90 times more than rival free coding assistants (which typically restrict developers to around 2,000 completions.)

This level of support can accommodate even the most prolific professional coders, let alone students or part-time developers exploring their passions.

Gemini AI Code Assist seamlessly integrates with IDEs

Google says it understands where developers spend their time: in Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). With this in mind, Gemini Code Assist for individuals is available as an extension for Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDEs, and GitHub.

This universal availability ensures that developers can:

• Generate, explain, optimise, and debug code within their preferred editing environment.
• Stay focused on coding without switching between windows or scouring external platforms for help.
• Utilise AI capabilities already familiar to enterprise users of Firebase and Android Studio.

The tool’s capabilities go beyond code completion; developers can harness natural language commands to simplify complex coding tasks. Imagine typing, “Build a HTML form with fields for name, email, and message with a submit button,” or “Write a script to email daily weather forecasts,” and getting an immediate, functional code snippet in response.

Gemini Code Assist also offers a 128,000-token context window, enabling it to better understand large local codebases and provide more accurate insights. That’s particularly useful for creating comments, testing requirements, or debugging issues with substantial datasets.

Meeting the global shift towards workflow integration

The introduction of these tools reflects findings from Google’s own developer-oriented DORA research, which reveals that over 75% of developers now rely on AI tools in their daily work.

At Google itself, more than a quarter of new code is AI-generated, with human engineers reviewing the AI’s output before committing it to production.

With the global developer population forecasted to reach 57.8 million by 2028, Google’s offering couldn’t be timelier. These free tools are intended to help developers jumpstart their projects and compete on equal footing with larger, better-resourced teams by providing access to the same powerful AI assistance.

AI code reviews with Gemini Code Assist for GitHub

In addition to helping developers write code, Google aims to improve the notoriously time-consuming code review process. Gemini Code Assist for GitHub is now available in public preview.

This tool provides AI code reviews for both public and private repositories, empowering individual developers and small teams to uphold high standards of code quality without hours of manual review.

Gemini Code Assist features include:

• Detection of bugs and stylistic inconsistencies.
• Automatic suggestions for code changes and fixes.
• Tailored code reviews based on custom style guides.

Developers can specify custom instructions for Gemini by creating and storing a `.gemini/styleguide.md` file within their repository. This flexibility ensures that Gemini complements each team’s unique workflows and coding conventions.

With its seamless integration as a GitHub app, Gemini Code Assist for GitHub makes the iterative review process quicker and more efficient—allowing developers to focus on actual innovation rather than time-consuming fixes.

Getting started with Gemini AI: No cost, no fuss

Getting started with Gemini Code Assist is straightforward. All that’s required is a personal Gmail account – no credit cards, invoices, or other strings attached. Users can install the free AI tools directly into their existing IDEs of choice.

Whether you’re creating an interactive JavaScript data visualisation for a university project or streamlining pull requests for a startup’s fledgling app, Gemini Code Assist promises to help coders build faster, smarter, and more cost-effectively.

Feedback from this public preview phase will be crucial in shaping future updates to ensure both casual and professional developers find the platform user-friendly and adaptive to their needs.

Google has taken a significant step in making advanced AI capabilities accessible to all developers, regardless of their experience or financial resources. Whether you’re a seasoned coder or a complete beginner, one thing is clear: AI-powered coding assistance is no longer a luxury but an essential tool for the modern developer.