Project ID: gen-lang-client-0717616255 (project name: otomasyon). Billing account is Cloud Prepay, Tier 1, credit balance shows 5.00 EUR fully unused (added Sep 20). Confirmed Tier 1 status on the API Keys page, the Billing page, and the Rate Limit page, which shows a 1000 RPM entitlement for Gemini 3 Flash models on this project.
Despite this, live API calls to gemini-3.6-flash and separately to gemini-3.8-flash both fail with 429 errors referencing the FREE tier quota, not the paid tier:
quotaMetric: generativelanguage.googleapis.com/generate_content_free_tier_requests
quotaId: GenerateRequestsPerMinutePerProjectPerModel-FreeTier
quotaValue: 5
model: gemini-3.8-flash
This happens consistently once more than about 5 requests per minute are made, exactly matching the free tier limit, even though the account has been on Tier 1 with unused prepaid credit for a full week now.
I found a very similar unresolved report here: Tier 1 billing enabled but API still uses free tier quotas (429 error)
Could someone from the Gemini API team help investigate why the free tier quota bucket is still being enforced for this project despite confirmed Tier 1 billing? Happy to provide any additional diagnostic info. Thank you.