Gemini 3.x Search Grounding - free usage not included anymore?

Gemini API
1

As per the Gemini pricing page, I should receive “5,000 prompts per month (free, shared across Gemini 3), then $14 / 1,000 search queries” on a Tier 1 billing account - but it appears I am being billed immediately for grounding usage.

If the actual spend breakdown in AI Studio was clearer then I could be more certain, but I have been using Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite with <2M input tokens and been charged >$8 for this usage - so I assume it must be related to my ~900 search grounding uses in the requests.

What’s happening here? Is the pricing page incorrect and we do not have free allowance of Search Grounding?

2

Bringing this back above the mountain of spam

3

To answer my own question, and for others here with the same question:

Despite the wording “5,000 prompts per month (free, shared across Gemini 3), then $14 / 1,000 search queries” on the API pricing page, it’s actually 5,000 search requests per month, and you have no visibility into how many search requests each of your PROMPTS is resulting in.

So, do not expect to get 5,000 PROMPTS per month - I sent less than 500 prompts, which resulted in well over 5,000 search requests.

Google employees - you should consider revising this wording as it’s very misleading.