Prepayment credits depleted error persists on brand-new project with no billing account linked

Gemini API
1

I’m getting a persistent 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED error with the message “Your prepayment credits are depleted” even on a fresh project that has never had a billing account linked.

Timeline:

  1. Original project campus-2627b (project number 8191812314..) had a Cloud Billing account (“My Billing Account”, billing ID 018D78-45548B-861E..) linked after a $10 top-up. The prepay balance depleted after roughly 20 API calls, which is far more than the expected cost for that volume on Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite.
  2. I disabled billing on campus-2627b via the Billing console, expecting the project to revert to the free tier. The same “prepayment credits are depleted” error persisted.
  3. To rule out a stuck per-project state, I created a brand-new project, campusiprojectnew (project number 492525638228), generated a fresh Gemini API key under it, and confirmed in Billing → “Your projects” that this new project has no billing account linked at all.
  4. Calling the Gemini API with the new project’s key still returns the exact same error:
429 {"error":{"code":429,"message":"Your prepayment credits are depleted. Please go to AI Studio at https://ai.studio/projects to manage your project and billing. Learn more at https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#prepay. ","status":"RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED"}}

This suggests the block is tied to my Google account/organization (campusi.ge, org ID 746408146313) rather than any specific project’s billing state, since a project with zero billing linkage is still being treated as prepay-depleted.

Could someone from the team take a look and run a manual sync / clear the stuck prepay flag? Happy to provide any additional IDs via DM.

  • Old project ID: campus-2627b / number 8191812314..
  • New project ID: campusiprojectnew / number 4925256382..
  • Billing account ID: 018D78-45548B-861..
  • Organization: campusi.ge / ID 746408146313
2

Hello @Campusi_Team ,

Your projects campus-2627... and campusiproject... are associated with a prepayment billing account (018D78-45548B-86...) whose balance is depleted. Disabling billing or creating a new project under the same account does not automatically reset a depleted prepayment status.

Steps to resolve:

  1. Add funds (minimum $10) to your Google AI Studio prepayment wallet at https://aistudio.google.com/projects, or
  2. Link your project to an active, standard postpay Google Cloud Billing account in the Google Cloud Console.