Is grounding free or paid?

Gemini API
1

Is the ‘grounding’ service that I added to my code using gemini-2.0-flash-exp free or paid? There’s a note on the website saying ‘Search-as-a-tool is a paid feature and only has a very limited free tier. See our Pricing page for more information,’ but unfortunately after checking there’s no information about how many free searches are available. If I missed this information somewhere and it’s easily accessible, I apologize for the confusion.

2

Hey @Dawid_M, your API requires a paid plan to use the search-as-a-tool feature.

You can refer to this documentation link here.

Thanks.

4

… and that’s a pity as a ‘try before buy option’ would save the distinct possibility of wasting time, money and mental energy just to find it actually doesn’t work for you (me)!

And in any event why would anyone pay if they can get it for free elsewhere? (e.g. Cohere)

Sorry to admit it but I still don’t want to go anywhere near Vertex AI again.