Google Colab

Google Colab (Colaboratory) is Google's hosted Jupyter notebook service for browser-based Python, machine learning, and data analysis, with GPU and TPU compute.^[1]

Notebooks and runtimes

Notebooks are stored in Drive, can load from GitHub, and download as .ipynb. Sharing includes text, code, saved outputs, and comments, but excludes the runtime's installed libraries and files.^[1]

Hosted code runs in a private virtual machine that is deleted after inactivity or its maximum lifetime. Hardware availability and usage limits vary, including on paid plans. Premium GPU access is not guaranteed; exhausting a paid compute-unit balance restores free-tier restrictions.^[1]

Paid access and Google AI plans

Colab offers Pro, Pro+, and Pay As You Go. Eligible paid Google AI plans supply monthly compute units; benefits vary by plan and region. Colab-native and Google AI subscriptions can coexist, adding units to one balance on different schedules.^[1]

The Google One Colab benefit is for users aged 18 or older and family-plan managers, is available on the web, and excludes trial memberships.^[2][3] Ultra also includes longer background execution and premium GPU access.^[3]

Google's Gemma account advertised access to NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 80 GB of memory through Google AI Pro, and NVIDIA H100 GPUs through Ultra.^[4] These advertised hardware options remain subject to Colab's availability and resource limits.^[1]

AI assistance

Google expanded its AI-first Colab interface to general availability on June 24, 2025. The interface combines conversational coding with a Data Science Agent that prepares an analysis plan, executes code, examines results, and presents findings. Users can give feedback during execution.^[5]

The assistant can explain libraries, generate code, propose debugging changes in a diff view, and refactor code in response to a natural-language request. It also supports analytical workflows that prepare data, train models, evaluate results, and produce charts.^[5]

Terminal workflows

Google introduced the Colab command-line interface on June 5, 2026, allowing terminal users and agents to work with remote Colab runtimes.^[6] The CLI supports Linux and macOS. Its repository documents Python-script and notebook execution, remote file management, and export of session logs.^[7]

The CLI sends a local script's contents to the remote kernel when using exec -f; it does not require a separate upload first. colab run combines provisioning, execution, file retrieval, and runtime cleanup in one job.^[7]

Local runtime connections

Colab can connect to Jupyter or Google's Colab Docker runtime on a user's own machine. This lets the notebook execute code using local hardware, but that code can read, modify, and delete local files. Sharing the notebook does not share the local runtime; other users normally receive a hosted runtime.^[8]

Google labels its Docker runtime image for demonstration use rather than production because its dependencies can be outdated and vulnerabilities may remain untriaged. Code-cell outputs are saved to Drive by default, with a notebook setting to omit them.^[8]

References

1. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5Google Colaboratory. Frequently Asked Questions. Accessed October 10, 2026.
2. ^1 ^2Google One Help. Use Google AI Pro benefits, Use Google Colab. Accessed October 10, 2026.
3. ^1 ^2 ^3Google One Help. Use Google AI Ultra benefits, Use Google Colab. Accessed October 10, 2026.
4. ^Google Gemma. Google AI Pro and Ultra Colab hardware announcement. X. Accessed October 10, 2026.
5. ^1 ^2Nick Sharma, Jeffrey Mew, and Ilai Soloducho. Supercharge your notebooks: The new AI-first Google Colab is now available to everyone. Google Developers Blog. June 24, 2025.
6. ^Spencer Shumway, Tyler Pirtle, and Seth Troisi. Introducing the Google Colab CLI. Google Developers Blog. June 5, 2026.
7. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6Google Colab. Google Colab CLI repository, README and command index. Accessed October 10, 2026.
8. ^1 ^2Google Colaboratory. Local runtimes. Accessed October 10, 2026.