Quick question on Google AI Studio free tier limits (Gemini API)

Google AI Studio
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Hi everyone,

I’m starting to use the Gemini API through Google AI Studio, and I’m a little confused about the “free billing tier.”

I know it provides free access, but what happens if I accidentally exceed the free quota? For instance, let’s say I hit a limit like 1 million tokens (or whatever the daily/monthly limit is).

If I’m only on the free tier (no paid billing account enabled), will I get an unexpected bill for the overage, or will my API calls just get rate-limited and start to fail until the quota resets?

Just trying to make sure I can experiment safely without getting charged.

Thanks!

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Hi @evolved ,

Welcome to the Forum!!
Thank you for reaching out!
If you don’t enable a billing account, exceeding the free-tier quota will not generate a bill.
Billing only applies if a paid billing account is enabled.
Once you hit limits your API calls will likely fail with 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED errors.

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