Can you deploy a Google AI Studio app for free?
Quick answer
Yes, for up to 2 apps if your account qualifies: Google's AI Studio docs, last updated September 28, 2026, say the Starter Tier lets “eligible accounts publish up to 2 full-stack applications without setting up a Google Cloud project or billing account.” Other apps need billing.
Free plan: no credit card, 1 published page, 10,000 page views a month.
On this page
Yes, for up to 2 apps if your account qualifies. Google's Deploying from Google AI Studio page, last updated September 28, 2026, says the Google Cloud Starter Tier “lets eligible accounts publish up to 2 full-stack applications without setting up a Google Cloud project or billing account.” Any other app takes the standard deployment, which “Requires a Google Cloud project linked to your AI Studio account and billing enabled on that project.” Either way, “Each Google AI Studio deployment creates a corresponding service in Cloud Run,” and the published app “will use your API key for all users' Gemini API calls.”
2 more facts decide what an app costs you:
- Cloud Run's free tier needs a billing account. Google Cloud's free features page, last updated October 27, 2026, says “A Google Cloud billing account is required to access the Google Cloud Free Tier.” With one, Cloud Run's no-cost use is “2 million requests per month” and “360,000 GB-seconds of memory, 180,000 vCPU-seconds of compute time.”
- A shared link spends your quota. Sharing an app from AI Studio isn't publishing it. Google's Build mode docs, last updated October 26, 2026, say “When sharing, API calls count toward your usage limits. If you use paid models, costs may apply.” They don't say whether the person you share with needs a Google account to open it.
Where else the app can go comes down to one question: does it call the Gemini API? An app that does needs a server that holds the API key, which AI Studio's Node.js runtime and Cloud Run give it. An app that runs only in the browser, such as a game or a calculator, can go online as a plain page.
Google's pages were read on November 1, 2026, from 15:17 to 15:26 JST (06:17 to 06:26 UTC), and each one's own date is in the sources. Prices are in US dollars, for Cloud Run's us-central1 (Iowa) region. Google changes these pages often, so check them before you count on a number.
What the Publish button does and needs
Google's docs name the button Publish, not Deploy. With the Starter Tier, the steps are “Click the Publish button in the top right corner,” “Click Get Started,” and “Click Publish App.” When it's done, “AI Studio provides a Cloud Run URL where you can access your live application.” You can also set “a custom, memorable subdomain under ai.studio (for example, https://your-app-name.ai.studio).” Google releases that name when you unpublish or delete the app.
The Starter Tier runs your app in a project Google manages for you. Google Cloud's Starter Tier page says there is “No Cloud Billing account: You don't need to provide a credit card or set up a Cloud Billing account to deploy your applications.” The resources come under “the Starter Tier Additional Terms of Service,” not the standard Google Cloud terms. For an AI Studio app, the tier sets up Cloud Run, Firebase Authentication, Firestore, and Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL (developer edition).
| What you want to do | What Google's docs say | Can you? |
|---|---|---|
| Publish your first app from a personal Google account, with no billing | “Lets eligible accounts publish up to 2 full-stack applications without setting up a Google Cloud project or billing account” | Yes, if eligible |
| Publish from a Google Workspace account (work, school, or nonprofit) with no billing | “Your account may be ineligible if … You're signed in with a Google Workspace account” | Likely not: Google lists it as a reason |
| Publish with no billing after you've had a paid Google Cloud account | “Your account may be ineligible if … You have an active or prior paid Google Cloud billing account” | Likely not: Google lists it as a reason |
| Ask support to make your account eligible | “The Google AI Studio support team can't override Starter Tier eligibility” | No |
| Publish a third app with no billing | “you will be asked to either unpublish one of the applications or upgrade to a paid account” | No |
| Pick the region on the Starter Tier | “Your services are deployed in a single Cloud Run region” | Google doesn't say |
| Let visitors use the app's Gemini features | “The deployed app will use your API key for all users' Gemini API calls” | Yes, on your key and your limits |
| Serve people in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the UK with Gemini calls on the free tier | “You may use only Paid Services when making API Clients available to users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom” (Gemini API terms) | No |
| Add other Google Cloud products, more quota, or more regions without upgrading | “If you require service capabilities beyond the Starter Tier, you must upgrade your project to a standard Google Cloud project” | No |
| Keep the app's address when you upgrade | “Your application state, databases, and deployment URLs are preserved” | Yes |
An account can also be turned down when “We don't have enough evidence from your account activity to grant Starter Tier access at this time.” In that case, Google says to “attach a billing account and use standard deployment to publish apps.”
What it costs past the Starter Tier
With a billing account, the app runs on standard Cloud Run, and its Gemini calls are billed through the Gemini API's own tiers. Cloud Run's pricing page says it “charges you only for the resources you use, rounded up to the nearest 100 millisecond.” By default, an instance is billed only while it starts, shuts down, or handles at least one request.
| Cloud Run, request-based billing, us-central1 | No cost each month | Past that |
|---|---|---|
| Requests | “2 million requests free per month” | $0.40 per million requests |
| CPU | “First 180,000 vCPU-seconds free per month” | $0.000024 per vCPU-second of active time |
| Memory | “First 360,000 GiB-seconds free per month” | $0.0000025 per GiB-second of active time |
| Data sent out to the internet | “1GiB free data transfer within North America per month” | Google Cloud's networking prices |
- The free tier is per billing account. “The free tier usage is aggregated across projects by billing account and resets every month; you are billed only for usage past the free tier.”
- New Google Cloud accounts get credit, but not for Gemini. Google's free features page says the Free Trial “gets you a $300 Welcome credit to spend over 90 days.” Google's Gemini API billing page adds: “If you opened your account after March 2, 2026, you can't use these credits to pay for Gemini API and AI Studio usage, but you can use them on other Google Cloud products in the Google Cloud console.”
- Gemini calls are billed apart from Cloud Run. The Gemini API's free tier lists “Free input & output tokens” and “Content used to improve our products.” The paid tier starts when you link a billing account. On the Prepay plan, which new users get by default, that means prepaying “a minimum of $5” of credits; some accounts are offered Postpay instead. When a Prepay balance “hits $0, all API keys in all projects linked to that billing account will stop working simultaneously,” so the app's Gemini features stop until you add more.
- Every visitor shares one set of limits. “Rate limits are applied per project, not per API key,” and the published app sends every visitor's calls with your key.
Sharing an app from AI Studio, and whose quota it uses
Sharing and publishing are 2 different things in AI Studio.
| Shared from AI Studio | Published to Cloud Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can open it | The “other users” you share it with. “By default your app is private” | Anyone with the address: Cloud Run “gives your app a public URL” |
| What they get | They “can see its code and fork it for their own purposes” | The app |
| Whose Gemini quota it uses | Yours: “API calls count toward your usage limits” | Yours: “your API key for all users' Gemini API calls” |
| Whether they see your API key | No: “other users can use it, but they cannot see your API key” | No: the key is “included securely in the server-side environment” |
| Whether they need a Google account | Google doesn't say | Not to open a public URL. An app with Firebase Authentication or a Google Workspace integration asks for “Sign in with Google” |
- AI Studio warns you about costs. “AI Studio will give you a heads-up during setup and before you share if your app could incur costs.”
- Edit access lets others change the code. “If you share your app with edit permission, the other users can edit the code of your app.”
- A 403 error on a shared link. Google names 2 causes: “Privacy extensions like Privacy Badger may be blocking the app,” or the code has build issues. For those, prompt the agent to “fix any build issues with the current code” and share the link again.
Keep the API key off the page
Google's API key page, last updated October 27, 2026, says: “Treat your Gemini API key like a password. If compromised, others can consume your project's quota, incur unexpected billing charges, and access private resources.” Its first security rule for web pages: “Never expose keys client-side in production: Do not hardcode API keys directly in web or mobile apps. Keys compiled in client-side code can be extracted by users. To secure client-side apps, run a backend proxy server to make the actual API calls.”
AI Studio does this for you. In Build mode, “API keys are injected into the server-side runtime and are never included in client-side code.” A ZIP download is different: “you will need to set up the GEMINI_API_KEY environment variable in your hosting environment.” An app that calls Gemini needs a host that runs its Node.js server and stores the key, such as Cloud Run.
A host that only serves files can't do that. Everyone who opens a page can read its HTML, and a key written into it goes with it. Firebase Hosting is “optimized for static and single-page web apps,” and pairs with Cloud Functions or Cloud Run for anything dynamic. A Convika page is one HTML file, with no server that runs your code or holds a key on any plan, so it can't keep a key either.
Publish a static app as one HTML file
If your app makes no Gemini calls and uses no database, sign-in, or secret key, it can go online for free as a page. A game, a calculator, a quiz, or a landing page usually fits. AI Studio doesn't hand you one file: a web app is “A web frontend (React is the default)” plus “A Node.js runtime,” and the download is “the generated code as a ZIP file.” Convika takes one .html file up to 2 MB, so the app needs rewriting as one file first. If the app needs its server, keep it on Cloud Run.
1. Download the app, then ask another AI chat for one HTML file
Don't ask AI Studio's own agent for this. It edits your app's files, so the rewrite below would replace the app you have, and Google's docs name no way to undo it. Download the app first: Google's docs say you can “Export the generated code as a ZIP file.” Then open a separate AI chat, such as Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude, paste in the app's code from the ZIP, and ask for a single file. Google's docs don't describe a one-file export, so check that the answer is one block from <!DOCTYPE html> to </html>. Gemini Canvas also makes pages as one file.
Rewrite this app as one HTML file, from <!DOCTYPE html> to </html>, with no build step.
Put the CSS in a <style> tag and the JavaScript in <script> tags. No npm, no TypeScript.
Load any library from an https:// CDN. Remove every Gemini API call and every API key.
Keep all the data inside the page, and fetch nothing from other websites.
2. Run it in your browser
Open the free HTML viewer, choose Paste code, paste the code, and click Show the page. The code stays in your browser. If a button that used to call Gemini now does nothing, that part needs a server, and that app belongs on Cloud Run.
3. Get a preview link
Open the free publish-HTML tool, switch to Paste code, paste the code, and click Get my preview link. The link works for 3 minutes, with scripts and forms turned off, and needs no account.
4. Keep the page and publish it
Click Keep this page — free, no card and sign up. On the page's screen, click Publish page. Under Who can open this page?, choose Public and click Next. The first time, click Publish free. The page goes live at an address like yourpage.convika.page, with the Convika bar at the bottom. Anyone with the link opens it in their browser, with no Google account.
AI Studio, Cloud Run, Firebase Hosting, or Convika
| Option | Runs the app's server and Gemini calls | Card or billing account | No-cost use | Who can open it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share from AI Studio | Yes, inside AI Studio | Not needed | Your Gemini free-tier limits | The people you share with, who can see the code |
| Publish on the Starter Tier | Yes, on Cloud Run | Not needed, for eligible accounts | Up to 2 apps, in one region | Anyone with the URL |
| Publish with billing on Cloud Run | Yes | Required | 2 million requests, 180,000 vCPU-seconds, and 360,000 GiB-seconds a month | Anyone with the URL |
| Firebase Hosting, Spark plan | No: “optimized for static and single-page web apps” | “No payment method needed” (pricing) | 10 GB of storage and 10 GB a month of data transfer | Anyone with the URL |
| Convika Free | No: one HTML file, with no server that runs your code | No credit card | 1 published page and 10,000 page views a month, with the Convika bar | Anyone with the link, as a Public page |
On the Spark plan, past the no-cost data transfer, Firebase's Hosting quotas page says it gives “a short grace period but then your sites will be disabled” until the next month. Is Firebase Hosting free? has the rest of its limits. For a Node.js server on another host's free plan, see Can you run a production app on Render's free tier? If you came from Firebase Studio, which Google now points to AI Studio, Firebase Studio's shutdown covers moving your project.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free to deploy an app from Google AI Studio?
Yes, for up to 2 apps, if your account is eligible for the Google Cloud Starter Tier, which asks for no billing account and no credit card. Google says a Google Workspace account, or one that has had a paid Google Cloud billing account, “may be ineligible.” Other apps need a Google Cloud project with billing, where Cloud Run's free tier covers 2 million requests a month.
Do I need a credit card to publish from AI Studio?
No, not on the Starter Tier: “You don't need to provide a credit card or set up a Cloud Billing account to deploy your applications.” You do for a third app, unless you unpublish one, for an account the Starter Tier turns down, and for Cloud Run's own free tier, since “A Google Cloud billing account is required to access the Google Cloud Free Tier.”
Where does the Deploy button put my app?
On Cloud Run. Google's docs call the button Publish: “Each Google AI Studio deployment creates a corresponding service in Cloud Run,” and AI Studio gives you “a Cloud Run URL,” or an address under ai.studio such as your-app-name.ai.studio.
How much does Cloud Run cost for an AI Studio app?
Nothing within Cloud Run's free tier, once you have a billing account: 2 million requests, 180,000 vCPU-seconds, and 360,000 GiB-seconds a month. Past that, in us-central1, requests cost $0.40 per million and CPU $0.000024 per vCPU-second while the app handles requests. The app's Gemini calls are billed apart: on Prepay, the default for new users, you buy at least $5 of credit first.
Who pays when other people use my AI Studio app?
You do. For a shared app, “API calls count toward your usage limits,” and a published app “will use your API key for all users' Gemini API calls.” On the free tier, every visitor shares your project's rate limits. On the paid tier, their calls are billed to you.
Can people open my shared AI Studio app without a Google account?
Google's docs don't say. They say “By default your app is private,” that you can share it with other users, and that those users “can see its code and fork it for their own purposes.” A published app gets “a public URL,” which opens like any website.
Can I host an AI Studio app on GitHub Pages or Netlify?
Only a version without its server. AI Studio's web apps include “A Node.js runtime,” and a ZIP download needs “the GEMINI_API_KEY environment variable in your hosting environment.” A host that only serves files can't run that server or keep the key. An app that runs entirely in the browser can go on a static host, and Convika takes it as one HTML file.
Is my Gemini API key safe when I share or publish the app?
Yes, while it stays where AI Studio puts it. Google says “Your API key is stored as a server-side secret and is never included in client-side code,” and on Cloud Run it's “included securely in the server-side environment.” It stops being safe once it's written into a page's HTML, where anyone who opens the page can read it.
Can I publish an AI Studio app on Convika?
Only an app that needs no server: no Gemini calls, no database, no sign-in, and no secret key. Convika publishes one HTML file, with no server that runs your code or holds a key. Download the app's ZIP, ask a separate AI chat for it as one HTML file, paste the result into the publish-HTML tool, and publish it on the Free plan.
Sources
Each page was read on November 1, 2026, at the time shown (JST).
- Deploying from Google AI Studio (Google) (last updated September 28, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Build apps in Google AI Studio (Google) (last updated October 26, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Develop full-stack apps in Google AI Studio (Google) (last updated October 20, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Billing, Gemini API (Google) (last updated September 28, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Gemini Developer API pricing (Google) (last updated October 30, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Rate limits, Gemini API (Google) (last updated October 28, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Using Gemini API keys (Google) (last updated October 27, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Gemini API Additional Terms of Service (Google) (effective March 23, 2026; read 15:17 JST)
- Learn about the Google Cloud Starter Tier (Google Cloud) (last updated October 26, 2026; read 15:18 JST)
- Cloud Run pricing (Google Cloud) (no date on the page; read 15:19 JST)
- Free Google Cloud features and trial offer (Google Cloud) (last updated October 27, 2026; read 15:19 JST)
- Firebase Hosting (Firebase) (last updated October 21, 2026; read 15:26 JST)
- Learn about usage levels, quotas, and pricing for Hosting (Firebase) (last updated October 21, 2026; read 15:21 JST)
- Firebase pricing (Firebase) (no date on the page; read 15:24 JST)
Next step
How to share an HTML file as a link that opens on any phone
Email and Google Drive open HTML on a phone without scripts. Compare 5 hosts (Netlify Drop, Tiiny Host, Pagelive, GitHub Pages, Convika) and follow 4 steps.
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