New project instantly marked as "Restricted" and billing tier unavailable

Gemini API
1

Hello Google AI Studio team and community,

I am experiencing an issue where any new project I create gets automatically marked as Status: Restricted within just a few seconds of creation. Additionally, the Billing Tier displays as “Set up billing (Unavailable)”.

Could you please help clarify:

  1. Why are newly created projects instantly flagged as restricted?

  2. What steps do I need to take to clear this restriction and become fully eligible to use the Gemini API Free Tier?

Any guidance or assistance with this would be greatly appreciated!

Account details:

  • Email: aakash@ooolu.com
2

Hello @Aakash_Krishnani ,

Getting a 403 API error response and / or seeing “Unavailable” next to your project in AI audio indicates a flag has been placed on your account. To proceed:

If you’re on the free tier with no billing attached, please try the below steps:

  1. Check Model Availability & Rate Limits:

    • Ensure that the model you are requesting is available on your current plan. For example, not all models are available on the free tier. You can verify model availability, quotas, and limits on the AI Studio Rate Limit dashboard.

  2. Ensure you have completed age verification by navigating to Google Account Age Verification and verifying date of birth in Google Account Personal Info.

  3. Once age verification is configured, retry your request or create a new API key in Google AI Studio.

  4. If completing these steps still does not restore access (or if using a model requiring a paid tier), you might want to consider adding prepayment credits directly in Google AI Studio and/ or attaching a Google Cloud Billing account in the Google Cloud Console. Please note this will mean you lose your free tier quota.