You used to have to keep a separate Colab subscription to run models on a GPU, but now you can use Colab compute resources within your Google AI subscription. Google announced that it provides 200 Colab Compute Units (CCU) a month for Pro and 1,000 or 2,000 CCU for Ultra, depending on the plan.
Instead of paying for each tool separately, the trend is to gather AI models, storage, and developer tools into one subscription. The yardstick for competing on AI subscriptions is also shifting to what benefits come with the same price.
Running models on a GPU in Colab
Google Colab is a service for running Python notebooks in the browser. Without installing code on your local computer, you can connect a GPU or TPU runtime to try out machine learning models or analyze data.
This Google AI subscription benefit bundles Colab's premium resources and subscription-based AI tools into one account. Pro gets 200 CCU a month, and Ultra gets 1,000 or 2,000 CCU depending on the plan.
Colab benefits by plan
| Google AI plan | Monthly CCU | Colab benefits | Monthly price in South Korea |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | 200 | Priority access to faster accelerators and more powerful machines | — |
| Ultra 5x | 1,000 | Premium GPUs, background execution | KRW 119,000 (about $85) |
| Ultra 20x | 2,000 | Premium GPUs, background execution | KRW 300,000 (about $214) |
CCU is a monthly balance of compute resources. How much gets used varies with the type of GPU and the work, and you can look at your Colab runtime and usage on your account's Subscription screen.
Existing Colab subscribers can keep their current subscription and also receive the benefits of the Google AI plan. The CCU balances provided by the two subscriptions accumulate on the account.
How to link and check it on a South Korean account
You can sign up for Google AI Pro and Ultra in South Korea. The Colab benefits roll out in stages over several weeks to subscribers in countries where Colab is supported. When you sign in to Colab with the same Google account, the benefit is connected automatically, and no separate code or coupon is needed.
- Sign in to Colab with the same Google account as your Google AI subscription.
- From the Colab paid products menu in a notebook, upgrade to Google One to start your subscription.
- Open Settings → Subscription in Colab to check the linked plan and your CCU balance.
The Google AI Ultra subscription prices in South Korea are KRW 119,000 a month (about $85) for 5x and KRW 300,000 a month (about $214) for 20x. Each GPU uses CCU at a different rate, so rather than converting to a fixed number of hours, it's more useful to check the runtime you'll use and your balance directly.
More than GPUs: developer tools bundled into one subscription
Colab is one of the developer benefits in Google AI plans. Depending on the plan and region, they also include cloud storage, higher-tier models and usage in the Gemini app, Gemini features in Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, and Vids, NotebookLM, Antigravity, and AI Studio access.
The subscription lineup is widening so that everything from model experiments and running notebooks to document and email work can continue from the same account. If you're a developer already using GPU resources, it's worth putting your existing Colab billing next to the Google AI plan and comparing what's included.
Google is growing the value of the bundle rather than a single tool. As the yardstick for competing on AI subscriptions changes, teams that were paying for GPU costs separately should take another look at their current subscriptions.