The Google Developer Program is getting a host of new tools – but you’ll need to pay

• Google Developer Program is now available with free or $299/year subscriptions
• “Benefits” include $500 in Google Cloud credits, 1:1 time with experts, and more
• Available now to personal users, except for customers in Europe/UK/Switzerland

Google has launched a new premium membership for its Google Developer Program in an effort to monetize the initiative, and has introduced a host of new features to justify those extra dollars.

The program was introduced earlier in 2024 as a free resource hub for developers, but hot on the heels of the free tier is a premium subscription set to cost developers $299 per year.

Paying customers will now get access to one-to-one consultations with Google Cloud experts, unlimited access to the Google Cloud Skills Boost training library and $500 in annual Google Cloud credits to sweeten the deal.

Google Developer Program paid tier

Jeanine Banks, VP and GM for Developer X at Google, and two of her colleagues described the new subscription as a “tailored suite of services to help developers throughout the learning, building and deployment phases of their journey.”

The company already counts “millions” of developers as users of the free tier that launched during Google’s I/O conference.

Banks and her colleagues wrote: “Building on the success of Cloud Innovators Plus program, this new offering is the next evolution of our commitment to streamlining the developer experience and presents the continued investment in the Google Developer Program as the hub of benefits and resources across Google’s many developer products and services.”

The additional features included in the $299 Premium subscription are being branded as ‘benefits,’ which are available to browse from a dedicated section of the Developer Dashboard. Subscribers also get access to the free resources already available in the standard Google Developer Program, like AI-powered documentation tools and enhanced workspaces in Google’s IDX app development platform.

Although the subscription is positioned as an option for individual developers, the small print…