Manual billing sync request — 429 "prepayment credits are depleted" despite active paid billing (2+ weeks)

Gemini API
1

Hello Google team,

Requesting a manual billing sync and investigation into a billing/quota inconsistency.

Project ID: elevate-performance-bb2..
Project number: 2776706479..
Billing: Converted from free trial to full pay-as-you-go on 2026-06-30. Cloud Billing shows “Paid account,” active, no warnings, $0.00 spent.
AI Studio: Shows paid API key (“Gemini Developer API key auto created by Firebase”) linked to this project.
Cloud Console quotas: Paid limits active (GenerateContent input token limit 1,000,000/min), ~0% usage. Free-tier quota rows no longer apply.

What works: API key authenticates; calls reach the API (consistent ~2s latency before rejection).
What fails: Every generateContent call returns 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED — “Your prepayment credits are depleted.”

Model: gemini-2.5-flash via Firebase AI Logic (firebase_ai Flutter SDK).
Duration: Continuous since 2026-06-30 — has NOT self-resolved after two weeks.
Recorded usage: None — calls are rejected before any usage registers.

Requesting a manual billing sync. Thank you.

2

Hi, There is no such thing as a manual billing sync. It seems like your project is currently on a prepaid account with a $0 credit balance in AI Studio. No usage has been charged or billed for the blocked 429 requests.

To resolve:

  • Add Prepayment Credits: Go to AI Studio Billing page and make a payment to add credit balance to your account to start using the API.
  • Vertex AI Option: To bill directly against your GCP Cloud Billing account, access Gemini models via Vertex AI (aiplatform.googleapis.com).
3

Thank you, i ended up setting up the vertex option.