My account tier keeps repeatedly switching back and forth between Paid Tier 1 and Tier 3, triggering automated upgrade/downgrade notification emails back to back.
This unstable tier toggling causes temporary 429 quota/rate limit errors in production when it drops down to Tier 1 unexpectedly. My billing setup and payment methods are fully active and valid.
Could you please check my account and help pin/fix my account status permanently to Tier 3?
Additionally, I would like to switch my billing setup from Prepaid to Postpaid (Pay-as-you-go) if possible.
This is likely happening because of an automated flag on your account. The following should help in this situation…
Check for banners / error callouts in the AI Studio Projects page & the Billing page. Mostly these flags cause visible banners or other errors on these pages with concrete next steps / appeal links.
If the above provides no concrete steps to solve the situation, you should consider applying for a temporary rate limit increase until this can be resolved.
We apologise if the above doesn’t resolve the problem for you immediately. We’re working to improve our messaging in AI Studio and support processes to handle this better.
I have exactly the same issue, and it is very annoying since I should be tier 3 with a max spend cap of 20000, but when I am switched back (for no reason) to tier 1, I am above the spend cap for this tier (200) and therefore am blocked to use the services.
I just followed your instructions to request the spend cap extension. Hopefully this will solve the issue temporarily.
I hope you will work asap on this because it has important consequences (in my case at least).
If this is indeed a bug, I hope Google can investigate and resolve it.
However, if this is intended behavior (accounts were correctly flagged by design) as you suggested, then I have serious concerns about using the Gemini API through Google AI Studio for production workloads.
This issue has reportedly affected many users repeatedly over the past few months, so it doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident. Unexpectedly being downgraded can cause significant disruption to production services.
I hope Google can investigate the underlying cause and provide a more reliable solution.
Sincere apologies for this issue. Please use this form to report sudden tier downgrades, our team will take a look: Gemini API Tier Downgrade Report Form
