What are you willing to give up to pay less for Google One?

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

A recent APK teardown from my colleague Assemble Debug revealed that Google could be working on a new One Lite subscription. The details are sparse, if not nonexistent, but the strings pointing to this new plan showed up in the Google Photos app, indicating that this plan should, in theory, keep up with the other One plans and offer some exclusive photo features to those who pay the monthly fee.

So far, we’ve had many theories around this new Lite plan in our Android Authority circles. Some of us think this new Lite plan will fall below the current Basic plan and offer less storage and fewer features for a smaller monthly fee than $1.99.

Others are wondering if the Lite plan will squeeze in the Basic plan’s spot, forcing that to go up in price with some added perks, maybe. I have my doubts about this, and I don’t think current subscribers would appreciate it at all.

A 'Lite' One plan could offer a cheaper entry point for Google's cloud storage and/or its Gemini Advanced features.

Wilder theories say this could be the name Google gives to its Pixel-centric plans, so it could offer its new Pixel 9 Pro buyers the rumored free one-year Gemini Advanced subscription without bundling that with all of the other perks of the existing AI Premium Google One subscription (2TB of storage, namely).

Now, I know that advanced AI features don’t sound like a “Lite” offer, but the screenshot below surprisingly shows the Lite plan slotted between the current Premium and Premium AI subscriptions. So it may not be a super cheap option after all!

Regardless, a ‘Lite’ plan should offer decent value at a decent price to deserve its name, and I love the sound of that.

Assemble Debug / Android Authority

Personally, I like two of our theories. On the one hand, I think a dirt cheap Lite plan at $0.99 per month might get a lot of people to benefit from One’s perks and allow them to back up more of their photos and videos than the measly 15GB included with a free Google account. Whether it offers the same 100GB storage with fewer extras or the same extras with a smaller 50GB(ish) storage, it would be a neat entry price to make more from our Google accounts.

On the other hand, I would love to see a cheaper One plan that opens up Gemini access. As much as I’d like to test all the fancy Gemini Advanced capabilities, I am not committing $20 per month for that AI Premium subscription, and I definitely don’t need the 2TB of storage that comes with it. Make it $5 per month and keep the 100 or 200GB of cloud storage from the Basic/Standard plans, and I’d be very tempted to keep my subscription at the end of my free first year with the Pixel 9 Pro.

As one wise girl said in an Old El Paso ad, “Why not both?” Well, because we only spotted one additional mysterious Google One storage tier. So it could be this or that — not both. Or it could be some other theory that we haven’t thought about in our wild speculation session.

What about you? What would you want from a Lite Google One plan? Let us know in the poll below.