Getting 429 rate limit error using AI studio after connecting it to a paid API

Even after having a paid API connected, i am getting 429 error using AI studio API. I get the following error

429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. {‘error’: {‘code’: 429, ‘message’: ‘You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more information on this error, head to: rate-limits. To monitor your current usage, head to: rate-limit. \n* Quota exceeded for metric: generate_content_free_tier_requests, limit: 20, model: gemini-2.5-flash\nPlease retry in 45.216510794s.’, ‘status’: ‘RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED’, ‘details’: [{‘@type’: ‘Help’, ‘links’: [{‘description’: ‘Learn more about Gemini API quotas’, ‘url’: ‘rate-limits’}]}, {‘@type’: ‘QuotaFailure’, ‘violations’: [{‘quotaMetric’: ‘generate_content_free_tier_requests’, ‘quotaId’: ‘GenerateRequestsPerDayPerProjectPerModel-FreeTier’, ‘quotaDimensions’: {‘location’: ‘global’, ‘model’: ‘gemini-2.5-flash’}, ‘quotaValue’: ‘20’}]}, {‘@type’: ‘.RetryInfo’, ‘retryDelay’: ‘45s’}]}}

but i am not even close to hitting my rate limit

it has become increasingly frustrating for us to work with google apis which are deployed in production. Please help fix this ASAP.

@chunduriv could you please help me resolving this, our major production workloads are affected because of this