Help needed: Request for manual review — 403 PERMISSION_DENIED / Project Restricted

Gemini API
1

Hello,

I am requesting a manual review of Gemini API access for my Google Cloud project.

Google AI Studio currently shows:

Billing tier: Unavailable
Status: Restricted

A direct REST request to generateContent returns:

403 PERMISSION_DENIED
Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.

I have already confirmed:

Personal Google account
Account holder is over 18
2-Step Verification enabled
No organization / Workspace management
No VPN or proxy
Project successfully imported into Google AI Studio
API request tested directly with curl, outside any application or SDK

I would like to use the eligible Free Tier and would appreciate a manual review of this restriction.

Project ID: charming-sonar-507606-..

Thank you.

2

Hello @Maria_Jose_Alfonso ,

Access to the free tier for project charming-sonar-...... is restricted by automated account verification checks. Please consider adding prepayment credits in Google AI Studio and/or link an active Google Cloud Billing account to use API calls with this project.

3

Thanks for your response. I understand that linking billing or adding prepaid credits may bypass the restriction, but that does not address the underlying issue.

Google’s documentation states that new accounts begin on the Free Tier. Another personal account under equivalent conditions has Free Tier access without billing, while this account is automatically marked as Restricted.

The account is over 18, has 2-Step Verification enabled, is not managed by an organization, does not use a VPN, and the project was newly created with no abusive API activity.

Could you clarify whether there is any way to appeal or manually review the automated account verification result?

I am specifically trying to understand why this account is denied access to the Free Tier rather than how to move to a paid tier.