Tier 1 Prepay project still applying Free Tier quota to image models

Gemini API
1

I have a Gemini API project named “YouTube AI Factory”
Project ID: youtube-ai-factory-50860..

The project is Tier 1 · Prepay with an active prepaid balance.

Text generation works successfully with the same API key:

gemini-3.5-flash → TEXT API: OK

However, image generation fails for both:

gemini-3.1-flash-image
gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image

The API returns:

generate_content_free_tier_requests, limit: 0
generate_content_free_tier_input_token_count, limit: 0

AI Studio shows Tier 1 image quotas for these models.

The project has an active billing account and prepaid credits.

Please check why the image-generation API is still enforcing Free Tier quota instead of the project’s Paid Tier quota.

2

Hello @Shahbaz_Khan1 ,

Can you verify the following steps:

Confirm API Key Project: In Google AI Studio, navigate to Get API key and ensure the key used in the SDK call is created directly under the Paid/Prepay GCP Project (and not under a separate/default Free Tier project).

Generate a Fresh Key: If billing was enabled recently, generate a new API key within that specific project to ensure the updated quota permissions propagate immediately. If you still face the error, let us know.