API Quota Tier “Unavailable” despite active billing

Google AI Studio
,
1

I am getting the 429 error when making calls with my new API key:

{
“error”: {
“code”: 429,
“message”: “You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more information on this error, head to: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits. To monitor your current usage, head to: https://ai.dev/usage?tab=rate-limit. ",

“status”: “RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED”
}
}

(This is all that the message said for me. I noticed others encountering this error usually had more info attached to their error messages, like this one)

I do have billing set up & enabled for my project, and Google Cloud says:

You’ve activated your full account
0 out of $417 credits used

However, inside Google AI Studio, my API key’s Quota tier is shown as “Unavailable”, and I always get the error “You are out of free generations. You can continue by using your own paid API key.”

This does not happen if I unlinked my API key. While my API key is linked, I have yet to send out a single successful request.

When I open the Rate Limit dashboard, I get the following message, despite being the project’s admin:

Project quota tier unavailable. Please contact your project administrator for assistance.

Would appreciate anyone with relevant info on how to resolve this.

3

Do you have active payment method setup in your Google Cloud billing? Does this issue also happen on a new project?

5

Facing the same issue, $300 Free credits are available and a $10 payment has also been done yet I still get the same error when calling the API https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-2.5-flash:generateContent

Google AI Studio shows: “Project quota tier unavailable. Please contact your project administrator for assistance.”

1 Like
6

Hey,

Hope you’re keeping well.

It sounds like your API key is not yet mapped to an active quota tier in the Gemini API backend, even though billing is enabled. This can happen if the key was created in AI Studio but the linked Google Cloud project does not have the Generative Language API (or the specific Gemini API) enabled, or if there’s a mismatch between the project in Cloud Console and the one AI Studio is showing.

In Cloud Console, go to APIs & Services > Library and ensure the relevant Gemini API is enabled for the same project your key belongs to. Then check IAM & Admin > Quotas to confirm you can see rate limits for that API — if it still says “unavail