It's not free. And it's legit one of the best models. And it was a Google employee who was among the authors of the paper that's most recognized as kicking all this off. They give somewhat limited access in AIStudio (I have only hit the limits via API access, so I don't know what the chat UI limits are.) Don't they all do this? Maybe harder limits and no free API access. But I think most people don't even know about AIStudio.