Google Chat

Google Chat Review: Free for Gmail Users, Built for Workspace Admins

Personal Account vs Workspace: What the Free Version Leaves Out

Any Google Account can start direct messages, group chats and spaces at no cost, and neither Play nor the App Store lists ads or in-app purchases. A personal account creates only collaboration spaces, where every member posts and anyone may rename the space; announcement spaces, where only owners and managers post, need a work or school account. Huddles, instant voice calls, are limited to work accounts, so personal and school users cannot open them, and webhooks are Workspace-only. Size caps differ too: group conversations stop at 400 people, while a threaded space holds 8,000 members on a consumer account against 500,000 on an enterprise one.

Turning History Off: 24-Hour Deletion and What Admins Still See

Each conversation has a History switch. With it off, messages are deleted after 24 hours; personal accounts choose freely, while work accounts follow the organization's setting. Admin help adds caveats: with history off, the chat event is still logged, admins can view message contents, scans for sensitive data keep running, and a message forwarded to Gmail can outlive the 24 hours. With history on, retention passes to Google Vault, which the US pricing page lists from Business Plus up, and Plus or Enterprise admins can set auto-deletion between 30 and 36,500 days. Since May 1, 2025, a direct message started by someone from another organization follows that organization's retention policy. Spaces with no user messages and 30 days of inactivity are deleted permanently.

Gemini in Chat Starts at $14, Not on the $7 Starter Plan

Google's US pricing page lists Business Starter at $7, Business Standard at $14 and Business Plus at $22 per user per month with a one-year commitment, while Enterprise is quoted by sales. Prices are regional and can change. The feature table marks Gemini in Chat, which finds, summarizes and translates conversations, as unavailable on Starter; Standard also lets users create spaces and group messages that include outsiders. Ask Gemini, which sends a daily brief and answers questions with citations from Gmail, Drive and Calendar, works only in English and needs an admin to switch on Gemini in Chat and Workspace Intelligence. Summaries skip conversations with history off, and Google says Workspace prompts are not used to train models outside your domain without permission.

Chat vs Slack and Microsoft Teams: History Limits and Prices

Slack's free plan keeps messages searchable for 90 days and permanently deletes content older than a year; Pro costs $8.75 per user monthly or $7.25 billed annually in the US. Microsoft sells Teams Essentials at $4 per user per month, paid yearly, with 10 GB of storage. Google's $7 Starter tier bundles Gmail on your own domain, 30 GB of pooled storage per user and Meet calls for 100 people. On a computer there is no Chrome extension, only an installable web app that needs Chrome 73 or later. Hangouts users were moved here from November 1, 2022, and the most-upvoted Play reviews, from 2022, prefer Hangouts.