[Bug/Support] Automatically downgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 1 — causing production outages

Gemini API
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1

Hello,

I’m experiencing an issue where my Gemini API access was automatically downgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 1 without any action on my part. This is now causing production-level outages.

What happened:

  • My project was on Tier 3 for some months
  • I was downgraded automatically to Tier 1 with no notification
  • Billing is active on the project — this was not a billing lapse
  • I did not change any settings or violate any usage policies

Impact:

  • Receiving 429 rate limit errors in production
  • Partial service outages for end users
  • Blocking the development of new AI products which require agentic behaviour
  • Tier 1 limits are far below what our production workload requires, which was stable and within Tier 3 limits

What I’ve already tried:

  • Checked the Quotas page on Google Cloud Console — usage data is not being tracked correctly; real usage and rate limit errors do not appear there
  • Attempted to fill the Gemini API Tier Increse forms: I’ve filled that 15 days ago and still didin’t receive any response

What I’m requesting:

  • Immediate restoration of Tier 3 access given active billing and stable prior usage
  • Clarification on why the automatic downgrade occurred

This is a production system and the downgrade is causing active outages. Any help or escalation would be greatly appreciated.

5 Likes
2

Hey @Jon_Matthews @chunduriv
Do you know any way to solve this ?? I’ve seen you guys helping some people in related issues

1 Like
3

@Andrew_Sa could you share your project ID ?

4

Sure! I’ll DM you the ID

5

Any solution/reason for this? happened to me, all the projects/api’s linked with our billing account were downgraded.

6

I also encountered the same issue. I was previously on Tier 3, but it was suddenly downgraded to Tier 1, causing online issues. This is my project ID: 199389278933 (boolv-462102). Please help me, thank you.

7

This happened to me too. It severely affects production. Please contact me so we can resolve this. This should be treated as a P0 incident.

8

This happened to me today.

9

Same here. I got this error early morning Today.

10

Same. All models have been downgraded to tier 1 and reporting on requests seems way off

11

Why is this bug not being shown on status page it’s been days now. Whats the issue??

12

Hello, this also happened to us and we need an URGENT fix!

All our API keys / Google AI Studio project was unexpectedly downgraded from API Tier 3 to Tier 1 without warning. We have no billing issues or other alerts

Project Details:

  • Project ID/name: projects/6361381.. & projects/99067551…

  • Project Number: 63613816.. & 990675512..

  • Time of Incident: ~9 hours ago (1am ET 3/15)

Business Impact: This severe reduction in quota limits is causing consistent 429 errors in our production AND development environments, significantly impacting our operations.

Please review my project quota and reinstate our Tier 3 API limits as soon as possible. Thank you.

1 Like
13

I have the same problem. My account was changed from Tier 3 to Tier 1, which causes online problems. My project ID is 63363389…(proven-chain-468405-r9). Please help

14

I also encountered the same issue. Our project was previously on Tier 3, but it was suddenly downgraded to Tier 1, which is causing production issues for us (P0).

This is our project ID: 53672605…

Please check and help restore the correct tier as soon as possible. Thank you.

15

Mine has been fixed. Can we get more details on the bug? I hope this won’t happen again.

16

I am still facing this issue. enumorous 429 errors

17

Thank you for your patience as we looked into this. We’ve identified the cause of the tier downgrades and we’ve rolled out a fix. All affected projects should now be restored to their original tier.

Apologies for the disruption this caused. If you are still seeing any discrepancies please share your project number via DM so we can investigate further.

18

Same problem for me. I’ve been downgraded from tier 3 to tier 1 with no update. Need tier 3 access back please.

19

Hi Davide, Interesting as this should be fixed. Could you DM me the ID of the cloud project you’re using?

20

Hi Jon, not sure I have permission to send DMs somehow, as I can’t see any options for that either.