Constant 500s on Gemma 4

[Yash_Ganatra]

I am using Gemma 4 31B for something and it almost always shows Error 500s. I am well within my rate limits(less than 10 prompts into a trial). Worse, I have no idea, how to fix it as well.

[Koeqaife]

Same thing here, it’s really annoying to get error 500 for a week straight

[wissam_metawee]

I’m having the same issue aswell, its been going on for around 5 days, and it keep getting worst.

[wollop]

Genuinely unacceptable - 2 days of 500s. Get your servers right smh

[Pannaga_J]

Hi @Yash_Ganatra @wissam_metawee @wollop @Koeqaife
Sorry for the inconvenience . Could one of you please share more context here

1. Which API surface you’re on AI Studio, Vertex, or REST?
2. Please share your request shape - are you passing images/video?Long prompts?
3. Does the 500 hit immediately or after a delay?
4. If possible please share screenshots of the full error

If there are any other details, please share them as they will help in the escalation.
Thanks

[Koeqaife]

I was using REST and prompts that are from 1500 to 2500 tokens.

But looks like today everything works just perfectly. After around 7pm CET yesterday, I get no errors. And errors were like with small delay, like 1-2 seconds before 500.

So, not encountering any issues anymore!
Thanks

[Yash_Ganatra]

1. AI Studio.
2. Medium context with Long System Instructions.
3. Immediately.

[Koeqaife]

Looks like errors are back after changing prompt. It looks like it’s happening on big prompts. (Big system instructions)

Now they happen without delay. Happens only on gemma-4-31b-it, gemma-4-26b-a4b-it works perfectly in many cases.

EDIT: Error rate is really low, it’s not constant, so I don’t really know what exactly causes it

[wissam_metawee]

Hi Pannaga_J

Sorry for the late response.

I’m using AI Studio API
And i dont believe this has anything to do with how large the system prompt is, it just happen rondomly. if it was based on the size of the instructions + the tool schemas + the messages. the the error would be triggered on every request. which it doesn’t.
Also based on what i have noticed the 500 error only happen while using the 31b model. i switched to the 26b model and the error totally disappeared.

Below is a snippet that shows multiple requests:
INFO:main:[slack] Gemma Swarm is running ⚡
INFO:main:[slack] Autonomous scheduler started.
INFO:slack_bolt.App:A new session has been established (session id: 90858b63-5c42-4f71-96d0-b55fce56449d)
INFO:slack_bolt.App:Bolt app is running!
INFO:slack_bolt.App:Starting to receive messages from a new connection (session id: 90858b63-5c42-4f71-96d0-b55fce56449d)
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error”
INFO:google_genai._api_client:Retrying google.genai._api_client.BaseApiClient._request_once in 1.29 seconds as it raised ServerError: 500 INTERNAL. {‘error’: {‘code’: 500, ‘message’: ‘Internal error encountered.’, ‘status’: ‘INTERNAL’}}.
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error”
INFO:google_genai._api_client:Retrying google.genai._api_client.BaseApiClient._request_once in 1.74 seconds as it raised ServerError: 500 INTERNAL. {‘error’: {‘code’: 500, ‘message’: ‘Internal error encountered.’, ‘status’: ‘INTERNAL’}}.
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` "HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error"INFO:google_genai._api_client:Retrying google.genai._api_client.BaseApiClient._request_once in 1.08 seconds as it raised ServerError: 500 INTERNAL. {‘error’: {‘code’: 500, ‘message’: ‘Internal error encountered.’, ‘status’: ‘INTERNAL’}}.
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST ``https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemma-4-31b-it:generateContent`` “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”

[Clintin_Brummer1]

​2. Issue: “Constant 500s on Gemma 4”

​The Problem: Developers are receiving 500 Internal Server Errors when calling the Gemma API, which halts application logic.

The Fix:

A 500 error indicates an unhandled exception on the server or a backend timeout, often triggered by malformed requests or temporary resource exhaustion.

• ​Schema Validation: Ensure the request payload strictly matches the latest API schema. Remove any legacy or deprecated parameters from earlier Gemma versions, as these can cause the backend parser to fail ungracefully.

• ​Exponential Backoff: Implement an exponential backoff retry mechanism in your application’s network layer. If the 500 error is due to a temporary traffic spike or quota bottleneck on the server, a staggered retry will often succeed.

[wissam_metawee]

@Clintin_Brummer1

resource exhaustion

I apologize in advance, but this doesn’t make any sense:

1. Both ‘gemma-4-31b-it’ and ‘gemma-4-26b-a4b-it’ models share the same api signature. based on my understanding this issue only happens with the 31b model, when people including myself switched the model to the 26b. the issue dissapeared (no more 500 error), with that being said, both models ran with the same request payload, and has the same schema validation and there was never a 400 Bad Request exception.

2. A 500 error is an internal server error, from google side, and i dont believe it has anything to do with temporary resource exhaustion. i’m already catching these exceptions: from google.api_core.exceptions import ResourceExhausted, ServiceUnavailable (429s / 503s) in my code and treating them with exponential backoff.

3. Using exponential backoff with retry logic, is not treating the source of the issue, its just delaying the issue, as i explained in my previous message, the 500 error happens randomly, this means, you can catch the 500 error and retry in a few seconds and the error would still happen again, and so on.

The 500 might be occurring during the generation phase, for example: the model hits a specific token or sequence that causes the inference server to crash, rather than the request phase.
If the 26b model endpoint is working with no issues for everyone, so the support team might need to check and debug the difference between both models endpoints.

[Koeqaife]

Sometimes errors are back, sometimes they disappear for days. It’s really weird to see and I dont understand what exactly causes server error. I might try some different combinations of prompts to see if maybe something from there crashes. It’s really annoying to see 50% error rate sometimes.

EDIT: I also think that could be OOM from google side, but they have a lot of memory so it’s unlikely

EDIT 2: Just checked in aistudio, error happens during the generation of gemma request. If you ask it to write a lot of letters without ending you can catch the moment when it just gives internal error instead of just cutting response on output length

[Koeqaife]

Tested it more, errors happen on gemma-4-26b too, just more rarely and usually on other languages

[Koeqaife]

Issues are still here… These errors has been there for already 3 weeks, it’s so annoying

[Yash_Ganatra]

any updates on this? is anybody still here with us?

[Yash_Ganatra]

now, not even 26b is working. why keep a model that doesnt work??

[wissam_metawee]

Yes since yesterday night, The 500 errors increased drastically, for the 31b model. When i tried to switch to the 26b model, I got the 500 errors aswell.

Not sure what happened the 26b, never throw this error before.

[Koeqaife]

Error rate is crazy. Also it takes some time before getting error, like from 400ms to 2.6s. It’s really random.

[Koeqaife]

The error also is just b’{\n “error”: {\n “code”: 500,\n “message”: “Internal error encountered.”,\n “status”: “INTERNAL”\n }\n}\n’, no info at all

[Yash_Ganatra]

For me the errors near instantaneous. It just show 500 outright. Not only that, if you try exponential backoff, it still counts those as rate limits. For me, the uptimes almost 30% on the API.