How about we stop DMing resolutions and share it. I find it wildly counter productive. This is absurd to be dealing with this when it supposed to be production ready.
Hi @chunduriv,
I’m on a paid Tier 1 Gemini project but am still seeing behavior that looks like Free Tier limits, including 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED errors mentioning the generate_content_free_tier_requests metric in the error details. Could you please check whether this project is correctly mapped to the Tier 1 quotas on your side?
From the public docs, rate limits are tied to usage tiers (Free, Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) at the project level, and Tier 1 should be active as soon as a full billing account is linked to the project. As I understand it:
-
Free Tier has low RPM / RPD for preview models like Gemini 3 Pro, and very small daily request limits since the December 2025 changes.
-
Tier 1 (Paid) should lift those limits substantially (roughly 150–300 RPM and around 1M tokens per minute for standard models), though preview models still have much stricter RPD caps and can still hit 429s quickly.
If anything in the backend still associates my project with Free Tier for generate_content_free_tier_requests, could you help get that corrected or advise what exactly I’m running into?
Thanks in advance!
Same problem here… Goes to free tier… Honestly, I see and endless stream of people with the same problem… Says Tier 1, seemingly connected to the correct billing account. Everything below threshold… And albeit, “Error code: 429”. Couldn’t you just come out with a solution that answered all of us that seemingly have the same problem, instead of DM:ing here and DM:ing there. I’m so tired….
Hey guys, same problem here since today. i am on pro plan and without tokens since yesterday. is there already a solution for users, or is google still working on it ? thx
I’m same boat. I also tried delete API key and create new one. It didn’t fix.
Same problem here: Paid tier 1, and below my limits. UNUSABLE since yesterday:
[] Testing Gemini API
[] Agent: gemini-2.5-pro
[*] Sending request…
[!] API ERROR (Status 429):
{
“error”: {
“code”: 429,
“message”: “You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more …
Same - Gemini 3 is great when it works
@chunduriv Thanks for helping us with the quota problem while the billing system is messed up. Please DM me so I can send my project number, etc. because my Tier 1 keys are also hitting a quota after 20 requests, and the “Set up billing” link for new keys fails to load.
Having the exact same issue.
Hi everyone,
I am experiencing the exact same issue and writing here to add to this bug report.
Issue Summary:
My Gemini 3.1 Pro RPD (Requests Per Day) counter has been stuck at 248/250 for over 3 days (since approximately Feb 22, 2026), even though I have made zero API calls since then. The counter is simply not resetting at midnight PT.
Account Details:
- Account Tier: Tier 1 (Paid)
- Project: toughCSB
- Models affected: Gemini 3.1 Pro (RPD 248/250), Gemini 3 Pro (RPD 170/250)
What I have verified:
- I completely stopped all API usage after Feb 22 — confirmed by the RPD chart showing ZERO activity from Feb 23 onwards
- Despite this, the RPD counter has NOT reset for 3+ consecutive days despite PST midnight resets
- The issue also affects a second separate Google account — even though it is a completely different account with its own API key, it shows the same stuck quota behavior
- Creating a new project or new API key does NOT fix the issue
Screenshot below shows the current state from Google AI Studio Rate Limit dashboard (last 7 days view, Gemini 3.1 Pro selected):
- The RPD chart clearly shows all activity stopped on Feb 23
- Yet as of Feb 25, the counter still reads 248/250 — completely unchanged for 3+ days
This is clearly a backend quota reset bug on Google’s side, not a usage issue. Could @chunduriv or anyone from the Google team please investigate? Any help or at minimum confirmation that this is a known issue being worked on would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Same issue. I connect API key, and it doesn’t charge me. I cant use AI studio without waiting until my quota resets. I want to pay, but it wont let me. Google take my money please. I don’t understand how to get around this. I am limited to only free usage on my project.
@chunduriv same problem here. We’ve been dealing with this for months. We are moving out of development face and ready to deploy to production but we’re getting 429s all of the time. Is there help coming?
Same problem but for Batch API.
Amazing. Bugs everywhere, and the most annoying thing is that it takes days to be solved, cause nobody is watching this community.
Update from toughCSB (2026.02.26)
I checked Google Cloud Console’s Known Issues tab, and it shows “[Generative AI on Vertex AI] Service Issue: Fully Resolved” as of 2026-02-25 12:50 US/Pacific.
However, my RPD counter is still stuck at 248/250 as of today (Feb 26). The quota has NOT reset despite this “resolved” status — meaning the fix did not apply to all affected users.
Also, I submitted a Cloud Billing support case (Case #68368826) requesting escalation to the Gemini API engineering team.
Could @chunduriv or the engineering team please verify and manually trigger a quota reset for affected Tier 1 accounts that were not covered by the fix?
Project: toughCSB / gen-lang-client-0629506683
Writing to also state im having the same issues. All of a sudden started getting the resource exhausted error for free tier plan and yet im on a paid tier one plan. Has anyone had any luck resolving this? I went through the merry-go-round today of customer service departments until the only response i got was “we will email you about this later”.
We set up our entire flow to use Gemini and now it has put in a position to find alternative resources for our api’s.
We had a similiar issue trying to use the Antigravity IDE where the Antigravity would not recognize the ultra plan that was purchased. It seems google has a lot of MAJOR issues around account creation and billing which just seems crazy.
Wow. Glad / Sad I found this thread. Glad, because now I know it’s not just me. Sad, because apparently, despite this happening to loads of people, Google are clearly struggling to fix it.
Have a load of customer projects locked behind the dreaded quota of doom.
We have Tier 2 projects / keys. All set up exactly as required.
To save anyone else the time - trust me, none of it works - we’ve tried absolutely everything, including:
Resetting keys; deleting keys and creating new keys (and yes, all were connected to our main GC billing account which is working just fine for everything else, including multiple production apps that use Gemini keys attached to the same account); deleting and creating new projects with new keys (again, attached to our billing account); pre-paying manually so our account is in surplus (i.e. rather than just relying on pay-as-you-go payment method, which works for everything else); taking out an Ultra subscription (even though I knew it wouldn’t work, but I was really desperate); the good old clear cache; delete cookies; restart computer (about 10 times!); playing around with the keys under Secrets loads; screaming at my computer; and of course doing everything I can to see if I can actually persuade Gemini to just let me (PLEASE, PLEASE 
) use my API key - here’s one of my attempts on Sunday morning after getting about 10 minutes of quota and then getting locked out again:
Seriously, Google. SORT IT OUT!!!
(Please, pretty please, can I give you some money and get on with my work?)
Got the same thing after a long chat with customer service: “we’ll email you later”. Been clicking refresh on my inbox every few minutes ever since. Not. Sooo frustrating! Can’t they just get one of the 25,458 developers to take a quick look? Maybe they have and they’re stuck in a quota loop 
Hi @chunduriv I have the same issue as others on this thread. Have set up billing but unable to use my API keys. Consistently get a 429/rate limit error.
Google Cloud Console has had the following message up for a while now, and unsure whether this is the issue or there’s something else I can do to be able to use my keys:
”We are currently experiencing data delivery delays for Cloud Billing Exports to BigQuery. Our engineering teams are actively working on a resolution. This alert will remain until the issue is resolved.”
Any way you can help me out?
Thank you!
(For clarity, the error is ““error”: {
“code”: 429,
“message”: "You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details.”
…BUT I haven’t exceeded my quota, as I have never successfully used this API key. I have $300 in credits remaining, and also have billing set up)