Best Practices for an Intermediary Service (BYOK Model) to Avoid IP-based Rate Limiting on Gemini API

Gemini API
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Hello Google AI Team and Community,

I am developing an application that acts as an intermediary service for users of the Gemini API.

The core architecture follows a “Bring Your Own Key” (BYOK) pattern:

  1. End-users of my application provide their own, personal Gemini API key.

  2. My application’s backend, which runs on a small pool of static server IPs (e.g., 3-5 IPs), securely handles these keys.

  3. When a user performs an action, my backend makes an API call to Gemini on behalf of the user, using that user’s specific key.

My Main Concern:

My primary concern is how Google’s anti-abuse systems perceive this traffic pattern. From your perspective, a single server IP will be the source of API calls from a large and growing number of distinct API keys. I am concerned this might be flagged as anomalous activity (e.g., resembling a compromised server or a proxy for shared keys), potentially leading to the blocking of our server IPs.

My Questions:

  1. Is this architecture pattern (many individual user keys from a few central server IPs) generally considered a compliant and acceptable use of the Gemini API?

  2. What are the official best practices you recommend for a legitimate intermediary service like mine to avoid triggering IP-based rate limits or blocks? For example, should we implement a global rate limiter on our end for each of our egress IPs?

  3. Is there a formal process to register our application or our static IP range with Google so that your systems can recognize our traffic as legitimate, aggregated traffic from a known third-party service?

  4. Are there any specific HTTP headers or metadata we should include in our API calls to help you differentiate this legitimate, multi-tenant traffic from abusive behavior?

My goal is to build a responsible and scalable service that operates correctly within the Google Cloud ecosystem. Any guidance you can share would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

P.S. Please excuse any mistakes in my English, as it is not my native language. I have actually used the Gemini model itself to help me write and refine this post.