# Critical Issue 429 Rate Limit Errors on Tier 3 Account with low traffic

**URL:** <https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/critical-issue-429-rate-limit-errors-on-tier-3-account-with-low-traffic/121224>\
**Category:** Gemini API\
**Tags:** gemini-flash-2-5, ai-studio, gemini\
**Created:** [February 4, 2026, 5:26am UTC](https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/critical-issue-429-rate-limit-errors-on-tier-3-account-with-low-traffic/121224 "2026-02-04T05:26:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![hieubq7](https://d1dlmcr85iqnpo.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/discuss.ai.google.dev/hieubq7/32/26285_2.png) [@hieubq7](https://discuss.ai.google.dev/u/hieubq7)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2026, 5:26am UTC](https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/critical-issue-429-rate-limit-errors-on-tier-3-account-with-low-traffic/121224/1 "2026-02-04T05:26:55Z")

</div>

**Dear Google AI Support Team,**

I am writing to report a persistent technical issue regarding **Rate Limit (429 Resource Exhausted)** errors I am encountering with the **Gemini 2.5 Flash** model.

Despite my account being confirmed as **Tier 3 (Paid)** and my total daily usage being well **under 5%** of the allocated quota, I am frequently blocked by 429 errors. I have confirmed that each of my projects uses a dedicated API key to avoid cross-project rate limiting.

**System Details:**

- **Model:** Gemini 2.5 Flash

- **Account Tier:** Tier 3 (Paid)

- **Project ID:** vsf-vapp1-prod-12

- **Environment:** `Python SDK`

**Problem Description:** The errors occur even during periods of moderate request frequency. It appears the system might be triggering a “Resource Exhausted” flag prematurely, or there is a discrepancy between the Tier 3 limits and the actual enforcement on my Project ID.

**Supporting Evidence:**

**1. Quota Dashboard Overview:** This image shows that my overall daily usage is significantly below the limit.

 ![image](https://d3qe71uytubmmx.cloudfront.net/original/3X/1/a/1a590828e57230242adf179c616989d0f0d46436.png)

**2. Peak Usage & Error Spikes:** The 429 error spikes in the metrics dashboard during the time of the incident.

**3. Billing/Tier Confirmation:** Confirmation that my account is correctly recognized as Tier 3.

I would appreciate it if you could investigate whether there is a backend synchronization issue with my project’s rate limits or if my requests are hitting a specific regional capacity constraint.

Looking forward to your prompt response.

Best regards,

HieuBQ