Gemini API suddenly returns "User location is not supported" — worked fine for a week, broke suddenly, persists even with a brand new API key

Gemini API
1

Hello,

I’m having the same “User location is not supported for the API use” (400, FAILED_PRECONDITION) issue that several others have reported here recently.

Timeline:

  • I set up billing (prepay) on this project about a week ago.
  • Everything worked correctly for about a week, including gemini-3.5-flash, gemini-3.6-flash, and explicit context caching (cachedContents).
  • The API suddenly started returning “User location is not supported for the API use” with no configuration changes on my end.

What I’ve already tried:

  • Created a brand NEW API key in the same project — same error persists. This suggests the issue is at the project/billing-account level, not the API key itself.
  • Redeployed my backend server (hosted on Render, Frankfurt region) to potentially get a new outbound IP — same error persists.
  • Confirmed the server’s public IP resolves to Frankfurt, Germany (not a VPN or restricted region).

Environment:

  • Project ID: ders-ai-c49..
  • Project number: 8869564871..
  • Billing: prepay, active, no payment issues
  • Affected models: gemini-3.5-flash, gemini-3.6-flash
  • Affected endpoints: /v1beta/models/{model}:streamGenerateContent and /v1beta/cachedContents

Exact error:
[GoogleGenerativeAI Error]: Error fetching from https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-3.6-flash:streamGenerateContent?alt=sse: [400 Bad Request] User location is not supported for the API use.

Could someone from the team take a look at this project? This is affecting a production app currently used by real testers. Thank you.

2

Hello @Baklava ,

This could be specific to your IP address. Please report it on our Report IP problems page. Suggested workarounds which may help for now:

  • Try temporarily switching to a different network (e.g. try with the hotspot from your phone if available).

  • Try asking your host for a new IP.

  • Trying switching between IPv6 / IPv4.

3

Same issue on our end.

Our production voice AI service started getting “User location is not supported for the API use” (WebSocket close code 1007) on all Gemini Live API connections starting around 10:30 UTC on August 17, 2026. Canada is a supported region per Google’s docs.

After investigation, the issue is specifically IPv6. From the same server (OVH datacenter in Canada):

Node.js v20+ defaults to IPv6 via Happy Eyeballs, so all our API calls were going out over IPv6 and getting rejected. Multiple servers with different IPs in the same datacenter are affected. Workaround: --dns-result-order=ipv4first
–no-network-family-autoselection in NODE_OPTIONS.

This was working fine until today. It appears Google’s geolocation database is misclassifying some OVH IPv6 ranges as unsupported regions.