Google AI Studio: Spend Tier Stuck, Have Met the Criteria Already!

Google AI Studio
1

Hi everyone,

we are having an issue with our Gemini API account. According to Google’s stated tier upgrade criteria, the account should be automatically upgraded once the following conditions are met:

  • at least $100 has been spent on the Gemini API since account creation
  • at least 3 days have passed since the first payment was received

In our case, we have already spent significantly more than this. The Google AI Studio billing / spending cap view currently shows around 832 EUR, and our first payment was made more than 3 months ago.

Despite this, our account still appears to be on Tier 1, and the upgrade has not happened. This is now limiting our API usage and preventing us from making further API calls as needed.

Also, the billing / spending cap view is confusing. It looks like the “monthly spending cap” may be showing accumulated overall spend instead of clearly showing the current monthly usage.

We have already opened a support case with Google, but I wanted to ask here as well:

Has anyone experienced a similar issue where the Gemini API account remained on Tier 1 despite meeting the published upgrade criteria? Is there anything specific we should check or request from Google Support?

Thanks in advance.

2

Yes faced a similar issue this morning even though I have spent much more in last 6 months for a live system. The tier should have been auto upgraded but saw a bunch of failed request this morning - Not reliable for a prod system as they have a old school form to request upgrade from even Tier 1 to Tier 2 with no clear timelines. I think every real customer facing app sooner or later require to upgrade that and no auto upgrade mean surprises.
Not sure if their tier upgradation code is written by Gemini only. :slight_smile:

For now I have redeployed my backend with gemini key from another account just to make sure any delay in google response dont keep things stuck.