Hello Google AI team,
Please review Gemini API free-tier access for this project:
- Project ID: mel-one-ellis-service-qa-free
- Project number: 1895932012..
- Generative Language API: Enabled in Google Cloud Console
- AI Studio project status: Restricted
- Billing tier shown: Unavailable
- No Cloud Billing account is linked
The Restricted status details say that API access is restricted and ask us to set up billing. We want to remain on eligible free-tier access and do not authorize enabling a paid plan.
On 15 October 2026 at approximately 04:38 UTC, GET /v1beta/models returned HTTP 200. A minimal generateContent request to gemini-3.1-flash-lite asking only for OK, with maxOutputTokens set to 16, returned:
403 PERMISSION_DENIED
Your project has been denied access. Please contact support.
Three small generation checks returned the same denial; no generated response has succeeded. The key has not been deployed to our websites and the generation feature remains disabled. No 429 quota-exhaustion response was observed. Intended use is a small English/Chinese service-information assistant based on our own published home-maintenance website content.
The Cloud Billing Support assistant would not proceed because the signed-in account is not an administrator on any billing account. No support case was created. No API key, email address, or customer data is included in this post.
Could the Gemini API team confirm the reason for this restriction and review whether eligible free-tier access can be restored without enabling billing? If account verification or another prerequisite is required, please identify the specific step.
Thank you.