Google Colab: free notebooks with GPU and TPU access
GoogleFree Jupyter notebooks with GPU/TPU access
- Cost
- Free. Paid plans add more compute.
- How long
- Ongoing.
- Last verified
- Nov 9, 2026 · research.google.com
What you get
- Hosted Jupyter notebooks with free access to computing resources, including GPUs and TPUs.
- Notebooks are saved to your Google Drive. You can share them like a Google Doc.
- Built-in Gemini features (code help and a Data Science Agent) for eligible users aged 18 or over in supported locales.
Limits
- Colab doesn't publish fixed limits. GPU types, usage limits, idle timeouts and VM lifetime change over time and aren't guaranteed.
- On the free tier, notebooks run for at most 12 hours, depending on availability and your usage.
- Not allowed on any managed runtime: using multiple accounts to get around limits, crypto mining, file hosting, proxies, and the other uses listed in the FAQ.
- On the free tier, Colab may also stop runtimes used for remote control (SSH, remote desktop) or for running mainly a web UI instead of the notebook.
Who qualifies
- Anyone with a Google account. The AI features need an account aged 18+ in a supported locale.
Claim it with an AI agent
A browser or computer-use AI agent, for example Grok Bot or Meta's Muse, can do most of the clicking and setup. You keep the steps tied to your identity, money and legal consent.
The agent can do
- Open colab.research.google.com in your signed-in browser and create a notebook.
- Set Runtime > Change runtime type to a GPU, if one is offered to you at the moment.
- Write and run cells while it works in the notebook with you, then save a copy to Drive.
- Switch the runtime back to no accelerator when the GPU isn't needed, which Colab recommends so you hit limits less often.
You do yourself
- Sign in to your own account yourself (password, 2FA codes).
- Approve the Google Drive mount yourself if a notebook asks for it.
- Decide on and pay for any upgrade (Colab Pro or Pay As You Go) yourself.
Example prompt: "Open the official Google Colab page (research.google.com) and check that this offer still matches what it says there. Once I've signed in, set it up for me. Stop and hand control back to me at any sign-in, phone or ID check, card field, captcha or terms acceptance."
Colab's FAQ explicitly prohibits "using multiple accounts to work around access or resource usage restrictions". Free runtimes are meant for interactive notebook work, not headless remote control.
Sources
Checked Nov 9, 2026 on the official pages above. Offers change, and the official page always wins. All deals