I’m getting 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED errors with the message “Your prepayment
credits are depleted” on gemini-3.5-flash-lite, on a project that has never
had billing enabled and is well within the free tier.
This started ~3 days before this report on my original project (working
fine for days before that). To rule out a project-specific issue, I created
a brand new Google Cloud project, imported it into AI Studio, and generated
a fresh API key — the exact same error appears immediately, before any real
usage.
Project IDs:
- Original (broken first): gen-lang-client-016903816..
- New (broken immediately): gen-lang-client-095309909..
Model: gemini-3.5-flash-lite
Error:
{‘error’: {‘code’: 429, ‘message’: ‘Your prepayment credits are depleted.
Please go to AI Studio at https://ai.studio/projects to manage your project
and billing…’, ‘status’: ‘RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED’}}
Neither project has billing/a payment method attached — both show free
trial status in Cloud Console. Requesting a manual billing sync for both
projects. Still happening as of today, several days in.