Permission Denied (403) - Project has been denied access

Gemini API
1

Project Denied Access - Error 403: PERMISSION_DENIED

Hello,

My project has suddenly stopped working and I am receiving the following error:

JSON

{
  "error": {
    "code": 403,
    "message": "Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.",
    "status": "PERMISSION_DENIED"
  }
}

Could you please help me review or restore access to this project? It seems to be a false positive from the automated abuse filters.

  • Project ID: gen-lang-client-0502965…

Thank you.

2

Sorry to hear about this. We’re treating this as a potential bug in Gemini API. Could you please enter the details of projects receiving unexpected 403 errors into this form?

3

On October 4, 2026, I accepted the Gemini API terms and created a dedicated key in a new Google AI Studio project. AI Studio Projects shows Free tier with no explanatory status warning; Billing shows No billing account. I have not enabled paid billing.

REST countTokens succeeds with this key. POST /v1beta/interactions with gemini-3.8-flash returns HTTP 403: “Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.”

Rate Limit shows 5 RPM, 250K TPM and 20 RPD for this model. The intended use is a small manual review of our own public business website, without customer data or external tools. No automatic retries are enabled, and generation has been disabled locally while this is resolved.

The form linked in the existing denied-access forum discussion is closed and directs users to Projects/Billing and Cloud Billing Support. The non-billing contact troubleshooter does not offer a category that accurately describes this situation: the project remains visible and editable, and no suspension or payment error has been shown.

Could a Google team member clarify the proper support route for restoring Gemini generation access on this free-tier project? I can provide project identifiers through an authorized private support channel. I am not asking to bypass the restriction or enable billing.

4

Hello @azservices ,

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.