Encountered 429 Error – Requesting Assistance

Gemini API
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Hello. I am an individual developer without any technical background , and I rely entirely on language-based descriptions to design system logic. I use LLMs to help me build an educational project aimed at a global audience. I have previously developed using models such as GPT-4/4o/o1 and Claude 3.5/3.7, and I am now using Gemini 2.5 to help complete the development. The core system has already been built, and I am currently entering a stage that requires extensive interaction-feedback testing.

I need to balance translation quality, problem-solving performance, processing efficiency, and cost. After testing all major LLMs, I found that Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental 01-21 offers the best overall balance. I gave Google’s official documentation to Gemini 2.5 and asked it to design an API request frequency that complies with the stated limits. However, I encountered frequent 429 errors.

Here is the background of my usage:

  1. I applied for 5 free API keys, using my 5 different Google email accounts.
  2. I followed the documented policy of 10 RPM and 1500 TPM.
  3. I send a batch of 5 requests every 6.1 seconds. After 3 rounds of interaction, large numbers of 429 errors start to appear.

I would like to ask for your guidance on the following questions:

  1. Has the request pattern designed by Gemini 2.5 violated the official usage policies? How should I instruct Gemini to design an API usage pattern that fully complies with the policy and avoids triggering 429 errors, while still achieving a good balance of efficiency and compliance?
  2. I am willing to upgrade to a commercial paid tier to improve usage frequency, but I could not find any pricing information for this specific model. Does Google have any plan to offer a paid version of Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental 01-21?
  3. If I upgrade all 5 free keys to Tier 1 using the same credit card, would that be a violation of the usage policy?
  4. If upgrading all 5 keys to Tier 1 is allowed, would I then be able to use them at the above-described frequency (i.e., 10 RPM per key)? Also, I noticed that the “RPD” value is listed as’-'for this model. Does that mean the model is not subject to a daily request limit?

Thank you very much for your time and for offering such an outstanding product.

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The 429 http status code represents congestion control. The easiest way to handle it is by re-issuing the exact same server request using retry and exponential backoff.

Hope that helps.

1 Like
5

Thank you, it’s done.