HTTP 403PERMISSION_DENIED "Lightning dunning decision is deny for project: projects/1104186197.."

Gemini API
1

Title:
Gemini API returns HTTP 403 “Lightning dunning decision is deny for project” despite active billing and successful payments

Hello,

I am experiencing a persistent Gemini API access issue.

Project Name: Buland Soch News
Project ID: 1104186197..

Error:

HTTP 403
PERMISSION_DENIED

“Lightning dunning decision is deny for project: projects/1104186197..”

What I have already verified:

  • Billing account is active and in good standing.

  • Manual payment was successfully processed.

  • Identity verification has been completed and approved.

  • Blaze (Pay-as-you-go) billing is active.

  • Multiple new API keys have been generated and tested.

  • Browser cache cleared and account re-login completed.

  • Billing was disabled and reattached as recommended by Google Billing Support.

  • Hosting server is located in India.

  • The issue persists with every Gemini API request.

Google Billing Support reviewed the account and confirmed that they do not see a billing issue on the project. However, the Gemini API continues to return the above error.

Has anyone encountered this specific “Lightning dunning decision is deny” error before?

Could a Google AI team member please check whether there is any Gemini-side project restriction, trust/risk flag, policy state issue, or backend authorization problem affecting project 1104186197..?

Thank you.

2

I have the same issue using Antigravity. I have choose to desactivate Gemini API and Gemini for Google Cloud API from my project but it didn’t work; I’m completely stucked. I need real help here

3

We have the same issue since today. We have 3 projects linked to the same billing account, after paying and oustanding bill due to a declined card, we are left with 2 of them working fine while the third wont work. Cloud Billing Support did nothing for us.

{‘error’: {‘code’: 403, ‘message’: ‘Lightning dunning decision is deny for project: projects/111600167..’, ‘status’: ‘PERMISSION_DENIED’}}"

4

any updates? having the same problem here

5

Facing the same issue with all models on Agent Platform

6

Same here, and Google Billing Support is not much of a help.

7

Hello Google team,

My project is blocked with the error below on every Gemini API call, even though billing is active and I have already made a payment:

Error: 403 PERMISSION_DENIED

Message: “Lightning dunning decision is deny for project: projects/7608232278..”

Details:

Project ID: 7608232278… Billing enabled (Tier 1 / pay-as-you-go), payment already made. Models tried: gemini-flash-latest, gemini-2.5-flash. The error is 100% consistent on all requests (REST and SDK). I am a legitimate user building an internal customer-service quality dashboard for my accounting company (Grupo Azuos, Brazil).

This looks like a false positive from the automated anti-abuse system. Could you please review project 7608232278.. and restore API access?

Thank you very much.

8

We have this same problem too:

We’re seeing our Gemini API key rejected with a 403 on every request:

{
  "error": {
    "code": 403,
    "message": "Lightning dunning decision is deny for project: projects/424872541903",
    "status": "PERMISSION_DENIED"
  }
}
  • Project: 424872541903
  • Billing account: My Billing Account (ID: 011B8B-EBF224-75CF..)
  • Account: …@roverai.cc
  • Billing status: Paid 3 tier ($20,000 account cap), $26.91 credit balance, auto-reload on ($50 added Aug 10) — billing is active and current, not overdue.

Could you please have this manually reviewed and the dunning decision cleared for project 4248725419..?

Thanks,
Josh