Personal account blocked: "organization does not allow API keys" despite no organization

Gemini API
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1

Hello Gemini API team,

I am requesting a manual review of what appears to be an account-level restriction on a personal Google account.

Affected project:

  • project-1b2eae81-5c04-4832-9..

The project is ACTIVE, has no organization parent, and billing has been recently
upgraded from Free Trial to a standard active billing account. The account is a
personal Gmail account, not Workspace or enterprise.

When attempting to create a Gemini API key via Google cloud console, I receive:
“Your organization’s security policy disallows API keys. Please use Application Default Credentials (ADC) instead.”

Troubleshooting completed:

  • Verified there is no organization or folder parent on this project.
  • Confirmed IAM & Admin > Organization Policies shows no relevant constraints
    enforced at the project level.
  • Upgraded billing account from Free Trial to standard/active.
  • Confirmed I hold Owner-level IAM permissions on the project.
  • Issue persists after all of the above.

This strongly suggests an account-level flag rather than a project configuration
issue. Could someone review and confirm whether this is a false positive that
needs manual clearing?

Happy to provide redacted screenshots or logs privately if needed.

Thank you.

2

Hello @Aaryan_Mishra,

Thanks for reaching out!

You have the below 2 options:

  • Google AI Studio: Visit Google AI Studio API Keys, click Create API key, and select your project project-1b2eae81-.... This generates your Gemini API key directly without requiring organization policies. Please note that you’ll need to add some prepayment credits to AIS wallet here: aistudio.google.com/billing before AIS starts using your billing account, else it will throw 429 errors.
  • Google Cloud Console: If you want to do this in GCP UI and continue encountering errors, please reach out to Google Cloud Support for assistance.