Free tier input tokens for PRO2.5 were reduced to 125,000 tokens with no notice. IF I HAD A CREDIT CARD ATTACHED this would have caused unfair billing. NO WAY can I sign up for a paid tier when 20% of the responses are unreliable AND you just change quotas at will.
NOT COOL.
{“success”:false,“error”:“HTTP Error: 429 - {\n "error": {\n "code": 429,\n "message": "You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more information on this error, head to: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits.",\n "status": "RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED",\n "details": [\n {\n "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.QuotaFailure",\n "violations": [\n {\n "quotaMetric": "generativelanguage.googleapis.com/generate_content_free_tier_input_token_count",\n "quotaId": "GenerateContentInputTokensPerModelPerMinute-FreeTier",\n "quotaDimensions": {\n "location": "global",\n "model": "gemini-2.5-pro"\n },\n "quotaValue": "125000"\n }\n ]\n },\n {\n "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.Help",\n "links": [\n {\n "description": "Learn more about Gemini API quotas",\n "url": "https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits"\n }\n ]\n },\n {\n "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.RetryInfo",\n "retryDelay": "21s"\n }\n ]\n }\n}\n”}
Thanks for reporting the issue and apologies for the delay in response.
The rate limits have changed from 250K to 125K for free tier Gemini 2.5-pro model. We have updated the Rate Limit documentation as well. This issue has been resolved.
Please let us know if you are still encountering other issues.
Thank you for your reply as typically Google simply deletes my messages with no explanation. I am not complaining here… what I am saying is that the free tier is great, but the way that Google lowered the rate limits in the interface with no advance warning and no publicly updated pages for months likely led a many users who had linked credit cards but largely rely on the free tier to get their AI integrations started, to incur ridiculous overages.
How can I trust that Google won’t do this again in the future?
Fox example, I am building a CCG now and may want to link a card for image generation, but then if Google lowers the Flash-Lite api rate limits, I expect I would magically get charged with no recourse for my usage that I would have never agreed to pay for, nor expected to. <<== that’s the Google problem to resolve because future rollouts done with such muted communication will establish a history of deceptive practices, documented.
Thanks for raising this concern. Google is constantly working on improving its products and constantly working on new releases and feature updates to existing models.
To address your issue, if user has attached credit card to their cloud billing, user is no longer FREE TIER user but instead they get upgraded to Tier 1 by default.
However I will raise your concern as a request to share updates via public channels for changes made to API rate limits
