Rate limit 429 resource exhausted error caused by google search grounding

Gemini API
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Some people may think that error 429 means that they have used up all their tokens and need to wait for awhile. It COULD be one of the reason, but it turns out having search grounding on, basically with a simple “who won the world cup 2026” also CAUSE 429 errors. I am using gemini 3.5 flash, in order for the search grounding to work i need to downgrade all the way to gemini 2.5 flash, which is quite outdated. This feels wrong, as running the same thing in google ai studio app under the chatbox have 0 issues,why cant the rates be the same? I genuiely think this is a bug, it cant be that high of a token just to use search grounding right? I hope that this post can help ppl facing 429 issues, for now turn off search grounding until there are further developments.

For more info: i need search grounding as i am doing a transcription app with requires recent word knowledge/vocab, and i am using the free tier, but still kinda unfair since the whole point of using gemini is their strong search grounding capabilities, which is unavailable to free tier :frowning:

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search grounding usually has its own separate, much lower rate limit on the free tier compared to plain generation, so this is likely a quota difference rather than a bug, even though it does feel inconsistent with the ai studio ui. worth checking the grounding specific quota in your usage dashboard and the rate limits doc: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits. thanks for posting the workaround, itll help others hitting the same thing.

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I am a subscriber to Google AI PRO, and in my dashboard I see a quota of ZERO for grounding with search using gemini 3.5

If I try, I get the 429 error.

I tried to downgrade the model - as for previous models the usage dashboard shows I have a positive quota, but then I still get errors: “This model models/gemini-2.5-flash is no longer available to new users…”

If not because I unfortunately have a yearly subscription, I would immediately unsubscribe. Grounding with search is a basic feature.

But I will be focusing my efforts on the Claude ecosystem from now on, I guess.