CRITICAL BUG: Paid Gemini API projects keep reverting to Free Tier across new projects, billing accounts, cards, and API keys

Gemini API
, ,
1

I’m experiencing a very frustrating recurring billing / quota tier issue with Google AI Studio / Gemini API, and I want to check whether others are seeing the same thing.

I originally ran into the problem where every API key I created was stuck on Free Tier even though I had already linked billing. I did extensive troubleshooting and at one point, after about a day, the quota tier was restored correctly, so I thought the issue had been resolved.

Unfortunately, the problem has now come back. As of today, all of my projects and API keys are again showing Free Tier, and nothing I do seems to fix it.

Here is what I have already tried:

  • creating entirely new Google Cloud projects

  • creating new billing accounts

  • linking a new credit card

  • generating brand new API keys

  • setting up the Gemini API first from Google Cloud Console before using AI Studio

  • redoing the billing setup flow when prompted

None of these approaches work. All the new projects and API keys created right now are on Free Tier!

What makes this especially confusing is:

  • this does not seem tied to one project

  • this does not seem tied to one billing account

  • this does not seem tied to one payment method

  • this does not seem tied to one API key

It feels like there is some backend billing-tier synchronization problem, because I have now tried essentially every obvious fix and the behavior keeps coming back.

This is seriously delaying my work and has already cost me a lot of time in repeated troubleshooting.

I would really appreciate clarification on:

  1. whether this is a known issue

  2. whether others are currently experiencing paid projects reverting to Free Tier

  3. whether there is any reliable fix besides waiting for backend propagation

  4. whether support can manually verify or refresh the project’s billing / quota tier status

If anyone from Google can help, I’d be very grateful. At this point I mainly want to know whether this is a platform-side issue rather than something wrong in my configuration.

This is extremely frustrating and has delayed my work a lot. I’d really like to know if this is a known issue on Google’s side or if anyone has found a real fix.

2 Likes
2

I’m getting 429 error in paid api for gemini 2.5 flash image model.

1 Like
3

literally experiencing this exact same problem. Spent 1 hour but no fix.

2 Likes
4

We are also facing the same issue.

2 Likes
5

this is experianced in many forms - i have created my own post for this issue, and i have commented on 3 other threads for this issue. They are unable to resolve this issue. they need to direct resource to this issue. this is a production stopping issue.

4 Likes