Nest Aware Is Now Google Home Premium: Plans, Costs and Do You Need It?

Nest Aware is now called Google Home Premium. Google renamed its camera subscription on October 1, 2025, and moved every subscriber over automatically: Nest Aware became the Standard plan ($10 a month) and Nest Aware Plus became the Advanced plan ($20 a month). The video history and smart alerts work the same way, and the new name adds Gemini features for cameras, speakers and displays.

This guide explains what changed, what each plan costs, what your Nest camera does without a subscription, and when it’s worth paying.

The Short Answer

• What happened to Nest Aware: it’s now Google Home Premium. If you had Nest Aware, you’re on Standard. If you had Nest Aware Plus, you’re on Advanced. Google says there’s no change to billing and you don’t need to sign up again.
• Nest Aware cost now: Standard is $10 a month or $100 a year. Advanced is $20 a month or $200 a year. One plan covers every Nest camera, doorbell, speaker and display in your home.
• What’s free: live view, two-way talk, motion alerts and, on current models, person, animal, vehicle and package alerts. Saved video is limited to a few hours.
• What you pay for: 30 or 60 days of video history, familiar face alerts, 24/7 recording (Advanced) and the Gemini camera features (Advanced, newest models only).
• Already pay for Google AI Pro? It includes the Standard plan, so you may not need to buy it separately.

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What Happened to Nest Aware and Nest Aware Plus

Google replaced Nest Aware with Google Home Premium on October 1, 2025. The plans map one to one:

• Nest Aware is now Google Home Premium Standard.
• Nest Aware Plus is now Google Home Premium Advanced.

If you subscribed through Google, you don’t need to do anything: your plan was switched for you. However, the prices had already gone up a few weeks before the rename. From August 15, 2025, Nest Aware went from $8 to $10 a month ($80 to $100 a year) and Nest Aware Plus from $15 to $20 a month ($150 to $200 a year). So if you’re comparing with an older article, the $8 and $15 prices are no longer current.

Two older versions still exist:

• Nest Aware (1st gen): the original plan was billed per camera. Google stopped selling it on July 13, 2023, but existing subscriptions keep renewing with the same features. If you cancel it, you can’t get it back, so check that a Google Home Premium plan covers your cameras first.
• Nest Aware through a security company: if you got Nest Aware with an ADT or AT&T service, it keeps the Nest Aware name, and you manage it with that company.

To use Google Home Premium, you need a Google Account and the Google Home app. If you still sign in with an old Nest Account, you may have to migrate it to get every feature.

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Google Home Premium Plans and Prices

Google Home Premium has two plans in the US. Paying yearly saves you $20 on Standard and $40 on Advanced.

Plan	Per month	Per year	Was called	Video history	What it adds
Standard	$10	$100	Nest Aware	30 days of event clips	Familiar faces, smoke and CO alarm alerts, Gemini Live, Help me create
Advanced	$20	$200	Nest Aware Plus	60 days of event clips + 10 days of 24/7 video	Everything in Standard, plus AI notifications, AI descriptions, Home Brief and video search

The Nest Aware cost has always been per home, not per camera, and that hasn’t changed: one plan covers all your Google cameras, doorbells, speakers and displays at one address. Event clips on most cameras last up to five minutes. The 24/7 recording only works on wired cameras and doorbells. The Nest Doorbell (battery) can’t record 24/7 on any plan, even when you wire it, and the Nest Cam (battery) needs to be plugged into power for it.

Google AI Pro and AI Ultra. If you pay for Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month in the US), the Standard plan is included, and you can add Advanced for $10 more per month. AI Ultra includes Advanced. The regular Google One storage plans (without AI Pro) don’t include it.

Free trial. Each home can get one 30-day trial. A new Nest Cam Indoor (wired, 3rd gen), Nest Cam Outdoor (wired, 2nd gen) or Nest Doorbell (wired, 3rd gen) also comes with a one-month trial of Standard or Advanced.

Cancelling or switching. If you cancel, the plan keeps working until the end of the period you paid for, but Google doesn’t refund partial months. After that you lose your video history and your face library, so save the clips you want to keep first. To switch between monthly and yearly billing, you have to turn off auto-renewal, wait for the period to end, and subscribe again.

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What a Nest Camera Does Without a Subscription

Every Nest camera and doorbell works without a subscription. With no plan, you can still:

• Watch live video in the Google Home app, at any time.
• Talk through the camera with two-way audio.
• Get motion alerts and, on current models, person, animal and vehicle alerts (plus package alerts on doorbells).
• Set activity zones on current models, so a busy street doesn’t send you alerts all day.

What changes from model to model is how much video it keeps. Here’s what Google lists for each camera with no plan:

Nest model	Free video history	Gemini camera features
Nest Cam Indoor (wired, 3rd gen), Nest Cam Outdoor (wired, 2nd gen), Nest Doorbell (wired, 3rd gen)	10-second previews of each event, kept for 6 hours	With Advanced
Nest Cam (battery), Nest Cam (wired), Nest Cam with floodlight, Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen)	Event clips, kept for 3 hours	Not available
Nest Doorbell (battery)	3-minute event clips, kept for 3 hours	Not available
Older models (Nest Cam IQ, original Nest Cam Indoor and Outdoor, Nest Doorbell wired 1st gen)	Snapshots only, kept for 3 hours	Not available

So without a plan, a Nest camera tells you right away when something happens and lets you look, but if you check your phone the next morning, last night’s events are gone. Nest video history is saved in Google’s cloud, so to keep it longer you need a subscription. A camera saves nothing while it’s offline, so if yours keeps dropping off, our Nest camera troubleshooting guide goes through the fixes.

Without a plan, you also don’t get familiar face alerts (not available in Illinois), alerts with a zoomed-in preview, smoke and CO alarm detection, garage door detection or emergency calling. The diagram below shows what one of the current Nest cameras keeps on each plan.

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The Gemini Features: Standard vs Advanced

The new name mainly adds Gemini, Google’s AI, and the two plans don’t get the same features:

• Standard adds Gemini Live on compatible Google speakers and displays (longer, more natural conversations) and Help me create, where you type what you want in the Google Home app and Gemini builds the automation.
• Advanced adds the camera features: AI notifications (“a person is holding flowers” instead of “person detected”), AI descriptions of each event, Home Brief (a daily summary of what your cameras recorded) and Ask Home, which lets you search your video history by typing a question.

However, the Advanced camera features only work on the three newest models: the Nest Cam Indoor (wired, 3rd gen), the Nest Cam Outdoor (wired, 2nd gen) and the Nest Doorbell (wired, 3rd gen). Google doesn’t list them for the Nest Cam (battery), the Nest Doorbell (battery) or any older camera, on any plan. If you have older cameras, Advanced only adds the longer history and 24/7 recording.

You don’t need a subscription for the basic Gemini for Home voice assistant. Controlling devices, music, timers, reminders and general questions are free. Our guide to the best Google Home devices covers the speakers and displays that work with it.

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Is Google Home Premium Worth It?

For one camera, three years of Google Home Premium cost more than the camera itself. Here’s how it adds up for a Nest Cam Indoor (wired, 3rd gen) at about $130:

• No subscription: $130, with 6 hours of event previews.
• Standard, billed yearly: $130 for the camera and $300 for the plan, so $430 over three years.
• Standard, billed monthly: $130 and $360, so $490.
• Advanced, billed yearly: $130 and $600, so $730.

The diagram below shows the same numbers.

However, because the plan covers the whole home, the cost per camera drops as you add more: with three cameras and a doorbell, Standard still costs $100 a year. That’s close to Ring’s plan for all devices ($9.99 a month) and Arlo’s single-camera plan ($9.99 a month). If you only have one camera, Ring ($4.99) and Blink ($3.99) have cheaper single-device plans. Our guides to Ring subscriptions, Arlo subscriptions and Blink subscriptions have those prices.

Google Home Premium Standard is worth paying for if:

• You want to watch what happened yesterday or last week, not just the last few hours.
• You have several Nest cameras or doorbells, so one plan covers all of them.
• You want familiar face alerts or smoke and CO alarm alerts. If the alarm alerts are the main draw, our guide to whether smart smoke detectors are worth it compares that with buying a smart alarm.

Advanced (the old Nest Aware Plus) makes sense if you want 24/7 recording on wired cameras, or if you have one of the three newest models and want the Gemini camera features. For most homes, Standard is enough.

You can skip it if you mainly want live video and alerts that tell you who’s at the door. If you’d rather have saved video without monthly fees, Nest cameras aren’t the best choice: our guide to the best security cameras without a subscription has options that record to a memory card or a hub at home.

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Nest Cameras That Get Every Google Home Premium Feature

If you’re buying a Nest camera now, these three models get the most from a subscription: they’re the only ones with Gemini camera features, and they keep 6 hours of event previews for free. Each one includes a one-month trial of Google Home Premium.

Nest Cam Indoor (Wired, 3rd Gen) — Best Indoor Nest Camera

Google’s newest indoor camera has 2K HDR video, a 152-degree view, night vision and a 6x zoom, and it connects to 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz Wi-Fi. It plugs into an outlet with its attached 10-foot cable.

Best for: watching a living room, nursery or entryway with every Gemini feature on Advanced.

Price: ~$129

Nest Cam Outdoor (Wired, 2nd Gen) — Best Outdoor Nest Camera

The outdoor version has the same 2K HDR video and 152-degree view in a weather-resistant (IP65) body. It needs a power outlet, but because it’s wired it can record 24/7 with the Advanced plan.

Best for: a driveway, yard or back door where you want continuous recording.

Price: ~$199

Nest Doorbell (Wired, 3rd Gen) — Best Nest Doorbell

A wired video doorbell with a square 2K HDR image (2048 x 2048), plus package alerts without a plan. It runs on your existing doorbell wires (16-24 VAC) and works with most mechanical or digital chimes.

Best for: replacing a wired doorbell in a home that already uses Google Home.

Price: ~$199

If you’re still choosing a doorbell brand, our Ring vs Nest doorbell comparison explains the differences, and our guide to the best indoor security cameras has more indoor options.

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The Bottom Line

Nest Aware didn’t go away: it’s now Google Home Premium, and existing subscribers were moved over automatically. Standard ($10 a month) gives you 30 days of video history for every Nest device in your home, and Advanced ($20 a month) adds 60 days, 24/7 recording and the Gemini camera features on the newest models. Without a plan, Nest cameras still stream live and send alerts, but they only keep a few hours of video. Google lists every feature by model on its Google Home Premium feature page, so check your camera there before you choose a plan.