Hello,
I would like to report a possible metering or Free/Paid SKU-classification issue with Gemini 2.5 Flash Grounding with Google Search.
Environment:
- Model: gemini-2.5-flash
- Paid usage tier: Tier 2
- Grounding with Google Search enabled
- Only Gemini 2.5 Flash was used
- The requests were manually executed
- No Flash-Lite Grounding usage or other Gemini workload existed in the same project
The official pricing documentation states that Gemini 2.5 Flash Grounding with Google Search on the Paid Tier includes 1,500 RPD free, shared with Flash-Lite, before paid Grounding charges apply.
Official pricing:
However, my Google Cloud Billing report shows the following daily SKU usage:
2026-07-07:
- Free Grounding SKU FAF4-1886-D9..: 1,500 counts
- Paid Grounding SKU 1590-B4E9-A7..: 1 count
2026-07-08:
- Free Grounding SKU FAF4-1886-D9..: 2 counts
- Paid Grounding SKU 1590-B4E9-A7..: 1,498 counts
- Paid charge: JPY 8,474
2026-07-09:
- Free Grounding SKU FAF4-1886-D9..: 1,493 counts
- Paid Grounding SKU 1590-B4E9-A7..: 7 counts
The affected billing day therefore shows:
- Free: 2 counts
- Paid: 1,498 counts
- Total: 1,500 counts
My application database also shows approximately 1,500 Gemini 2.5 Flash Grounding requests per day, not approximately 2,998 requests.
All relevant requests were executed between 09:00 and 10:30 JST. In July, this corresponds to approximately 17:00 to 18:30 PDT on the previous calendar day. Therefore, the requests were executed well away from the midnight Pacific Time daily reset boundary and did not cross that boundary during execution.
Google Cloud Billing Support initially stated that 1,500 free requests had already been consumed before the 1,498 paid requests occurred. However, Billing Support later explained that it cannot access the request-level backend logs needed to verify that conclusion and directed me to this forum for technical investigation.
Could a Gemini API team member please investigate whether this was caused by:
1. Duplicate Grounding metering;
2. Incorrect Free/Paid SKU classification;
3. Incorrect daily allowance boundary assignment;
4. Automatic retries being counted as additional grounded prompts;
5. A billing or usage synchronization issue; or
6. Another issue in the Grounding metering system?
I would specifically like to understand:
- Why the affected day shows only 2 Free SKU counts and 1,498 Paid SKU counts;
- Whether Google recorded additional requests that are not present in my application records;
- The exact Pacific Time daily cycle applied to this usage; and
- How I can safely keep future usage within the documented 1,500 RPD free allowance.
I can provide sanitized application logs, timestamps, and Google Cloud Billing screenshots privately to an authorized Google team member if required.
For security reasons, I will not post my API key, billing account ID, project number, email address, or private support attachment URLs publicly.
Thank you.
