"Pro" Subscription (Gemini Advanced) vs API Quota 0 (Resource Exhausted)

Gemini API
1

I am a paid Gemini Advanced subscriber trying to use the gemini-3-pro-image-preview (Nano Banana Pro) model via the API.

Despite my “Pro” subscription, I am receiving 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED errors with a limit of 0:
Quota exceeded for metric: generativelanguage.googleapis.com/generate_content_free_tier_requests, limit: 0, model: gemini-3-pro-image

It is frustrating that my paid web subscription does not translate to API access for the same models, or that the “Free Tier” for these models is set to 0 even for experimentation.

Please clarify:

  1. Is gemini-3-pro-image strictly Pay-As-You-Go only?
  2. If so, why is it not clearly marked in the error message (which mentions “free_tier_requests”)?
  3. As a Pro subscriber, how can I access the features I pay for programmatically without double-billing?
3

Hi @AliW,

Welcome to the forum,

Your Gemini Advanced subscription covers personal use of the Gemini chatbot and workspace integrations, but it does not provide any quota or credits for the Gemini API/Google AI Studio.
To use that specific model programmatically, you must enable Pay-as-you-go billing in your Google AI Studio settings. There is currently no way to “link” the two to get free API usage from a Google One subscription.

Thank you!