Tier 1 Rate Limit Blocks 20-30 s Gemini TTS Clips – Promo Credits Delay $250 Spend / 30-Day Upgrade

Gemini API
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Hi all,

My web app lets users record 20-30 second voice clips with Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview TTS. We’re still in private beta, but usage is high enough that we burn through the Tier 1 cap (100 requests/day, 10 RPM) by early afternoon, leaving the rest of the day full of 429s.

Steps I’ve taken so far

  • Submitted the quota-increase form with traffic logs and screenshots – no response after a week.
  • Live caching + batching: helps but still hits the hard daily ceiling.
  • Looked into spinning up extra projects, but that feels brittle and possibly against ToS.

The catch-22 with promo credits

Google generously gave our account $300 in promotional Cloud credits, which is great—except those credits don’t count toward the $250 “billable spend” threshold for Tier 2. In practice that means:

  1. I must burn the promo credits first (weeks),
  2. then run up $250 of out-of-pocket spend,
  3. then wait 30 days for an auto-upgrade.

That could be two months of throttled users and broken sessions—pretty rough for an early-stage product.

Questions / plea for help

  1. Can Google grant a temporary quota bump (e.g. 500 RPD) while we prove demand?
  2. Has anyone else succeeded in upgrading early even with promo credits still active?
  3. Are preview TTS models absolutely fixed at 100 RPD, or are exceptions possible?
  4. Any best-practice suggestions beyond “make more projects”?

Environment

Model: gemini-2.5-flash-preview-tts
Tier: 1 (paid, but promo credits active)
Limit hit: 100 RPD / 10 RPM
Error: 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED

Happy to DM project ID if a Googler can take a look.

We love Gemini’s TTS quality and want to pay for higher usage—it just feels unfair that promo credits slow down the very upgrade path designed for growth.

Thanks for any guidance or escalation!