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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1

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!

3

Bump – still hoping for input from the Gemini team or anyone who’s managed an early quota bump

4

Hi @Ahmad_R,

Welcome to the Google AI Forum! :confetti_ball: :confetti_ball:

I went through your issue and escalating to the appropriate team..

In the meanwhile please go over Quota management best practices guide and content caching guide..

Implement solutions to better monitor and manage your quota limits..

5

Hi @Krish_Varnakavi1 – thanks for escalating this and for the best-practices links! :man_bowing:

I’ve reviewed the quota-management and caching guides. They make sense, but in our particular workflow they don’t move the needle:

Recommendation Why it’s tough for our use case
Batching / queueing Users generate 20–30 s voice clips from a browser UI and expect audio back almost instantly (chat-style UX). Adding a queue with deliberate delays would break that real-time feel.
Content caching Each text prompt is unique and rarely repeated, so hit-rate would be near zero. (We did test hashing prompts over 48 h: only one duplicate out of ~400 calls.)

So even with perfect throttling we still hard-stop at the 100 requests/day (10 RPM) Tier 1 ceiling by late morning.

What would really help

  1. A quota increase while we validate demand in private beta.
  2. Clarification on the promo-credit loophole: because promo spend doesn’t count toward the $250 threshold, we can’t trigger the 30-day Tier 2 timer—even though we’re ready to pay once credits are gone. Is that expected behavior?
  3. Any alternative path (e.g., shorter review cycle for early adopters) we could apply for.

Happy to DM project ID, support-case number, and request logs if that speeds things up.

Really appreciate your help!

7

im in the same boat…i just spun up 3 servers at 1.30 per hour…and ran up a $250 bill
now im waiting …by july 14th should have my upgrade …gotta do what you gotta do

google is a big company, wont be any personal attention to matters like this

9

Yikes, that’s rough! :sweat_smile:

We’re in the opposite boat:

  • 20-30 s clips, ~100 calls a day, 50 beta users :joy:
  • Flash TTS costs us maybe a buck a day
  • At that rate it’ll take half a year to hit the magic $250 spend for Tier 2

My dream to build a million dollars startup is over i guess.
Really hoping the Gemini folks rethink this for smaller teams. :crossed_fingers:

11

Bump - still haven’t heard from anyone from google despite requesting :frowning:

13

Hey Krish, i haven’t heard from anyone from the team. i desperately need tier upgrade. Meanwhile. could you please confirm if my promo credit usage adds toward the spending threshold? or i need to spend 300(promo)+250$ for an upgrade?