Hello Google Gemini API team,
I am requesting a manual review and unblock of Gemini API access for two of my projects. Both are returning 403 PERMISSION_DENIED: “Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.” on all REST API calls.
Project Details:
- Project Number: 7733848672..
- Project Number: 7563117021..
- Region: India (Gujarat, Rajkot)
- Use Case: Medical AI application (Gemini Live API integration for real-time assistance)
Troubleshooting Already Done:
- Confirmed both API keys are valid (no API_KEY_INVALID error)
- Generative Language API is enabled on both projects
- API key restrictions updated — restricted to Gemini API only (not unrestricted)
- Tested with keys generated both from Google Cloud Console and Google AI Studio
- Tested with fresh keys after saving restrictions — same 403 on both
- No VPN in use
- No banner or warning visible on either project dashboard in Cloud Console
- Google AI Studio web playground works fine with the same Google account
- Issue persists across both projects, ruling out a single project misconfiguration
- Waited 15+ minutes after applying key restrictions — no change
Error Response (identical on both projects):
{
"error": {
"code": 403,
"message": "Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.",
"status": "PERMISSION_DENIED"
}
}
This strongly appears to be a false positive from an automated abuse-detection filter, as AI Studio works perfectly on the same account but the REST API is blocked across all projects.
I have also submitted the official unblock form. Could someone from the team please manually review and restore API access for both project numbers listed above?
Happy to provide any additional information needed. Thank you.
Additional finding: The block appears to be at account level, not project level. Brand new projects under the same account immediately return 403, while a completely new Google account works fine. Both affected project numbers: 7733848672.. and 7563117021… Please review at account level.
Getting a 403 API error response and / or seeing “Unavailable” next to your project in AI audio indicates a flag has been placed on your account. To proceed:
-
Check for banners / error callouts in the AI Studio Projects page & the Billing page.
-
If the issue isn’t clear from the above, contact Cloud Billing Support.
Thanks @Jon_Matthews - I can not see banners/ error - I am just getting one error while i try to create project directly from ai studio dashboard.
Error you can see in below snap - after i created project from console and then created key but not working giving same 403 error.
pls let know what else i can - do we have to enable billing?
Same issue here, and my troubleshooting matches post #2 exactly (account-level, not project-level). Adding my case for review:
Every generateContent call returns 403 PERMISSION_DENIED: “Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.”
Affected project numbers: 2992979979.. and 2461858694.. (the second was freshly created only to isolate this).
Keys were generated in Google AI Studio (AQ.-prefix, restricted to Gemini API by default). Enabling the Generative Language API and waiting for propagation changed nothing.
A brand-new project under the same account returns the same 403 immediately, while the same code with a key from a different Google account works fine — so this is account-level.
Region: Japan. No VPN. Use case: a low-volume internal media workflow (~1 request/day, gemini-2.5-flash via the google-genai Python SDK).
No policy violation I am aware of. I checked the AI Studio Projects and Billing pages as suggested above — no banners or error callouts on either.
@Jon_Matthews could the team please review this account as well? Happy to provide any additional information. Thank you!
