Subject: Batch API consistently returns 400 FAILED_PRECONDITION on batches.create() — billing enabled, region Pakistan

Google AI Studio
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Subject: Batch API consistently returns 400 FAILED_PRECONDITION on batches.create() — billing enabled, region Pakistan

I’m getting a 400 FAILED_PRECONDITION error every time I try to create a batch job via the Gemini API, using the Python google-genai SDK.

Error returned:
{“error”: {“code”: 400, “message”: “Precondition check failed.”, “status”: “FAILED_PRECONDITION”}}

Steps to reproduce:

  1. client.files.upload() succeeds (JSONL file, mime_type=‘jsonl’).
  2. client.batches.create(model=“models/gemini-3.6-flash”, src=, config={“display_name”: “test”}) fails with the error above.

What I’ve already ruled out:

  • Not a payload/model issue: reproduced with a trivial single-request JSONL (“Say hello in one short sentence.”) and with two different models (gemini-3.1-flash-tts-preview and gemini-3.6-flash) — same error both times.
  • Not a file-upload issue: the upload step itself succeeds every time; the error only occurs on batches.create().
  • Not a billing issue on the account in general: billing is enabled on this API key’s project, and real-time generateContent calls with the same key and model work normally.

Account/environment details:

  • Region: Pakistan
  • SDK: Python google-genai (latest via pip install -U google-genai)
  • Auth: plain Gemini API key (not Vertex AI / not a service account)

Question: Is Batch Mode currently restricted to specific regions, and if so, is Pakistan excluded from the current rollout? If there’s a separate opt-in or allowlist step beyond enabling billing, could you point me to it? Happy to provide the full request/response trace or my project ID if that helps investigate.

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Hi ,

can you please check if your project assigned to right billing account in https://console.cloud.google.com/billing/projects . i got same as as there we two billing accounts and my project is assinged with non-billing/free-tier billing account instead of paid one.
i have changed the billing account with option under ‘Action’ and its started working.

have great day.

Thanks,

Naga

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My project assigned to right billing account.