Hello,
I am experiencing a 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED error when using Grounding with Google Search on the Standard API with Gemini 3. I am on Tier 3 and the issue appears to be that billing does not activate after the monthly free tier (5,000 prompts) is exhausted.
Environment:
- Tier: Tier 3
- Model: gemini-3-flash-preview
- Endpoint: POST https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-3-flash-preview:generateContent
- Tool: Grounding with Google Search
Issue:
Once I exhaust the monthly free tier for Grounding with Google Search (5,000 prompts, shared across Gemini 3 models), all subsequent requests return 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED.
AI Studio Rate Limits dashboard shows:
-
Gemini 3 / Search Grounding: 4K / 1.5K (exceeded, shown in red)
According to the official pricing documentation, usage beyond the free tier should be billed at $14 per 1,000 search queries and requests should continue. However, the pay-as-you-go billing does not appear to activate — requests simply fail with 429.
Error message received:
429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED
{
‘code’: 429,
‘message’: ‘You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details.’,
‘status’: ‘RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED’
}
Expected behavior:
After exhausting the monthly free tier, requests should continue and be billed at $14 / 1,000 queries.
Actual behavior:
After exhausting the free tier, all requests return 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED.
Question:
Is this a known limitation of Gemini 3 Preview models (i.e., pay-as-you-go billing not yet implemented for grounding on Standard API)? Or is this a bug?
I have already submitted a quota increase request via AI Studio, but wanted to report this here as well in case it affects other Tier 3 users.
Thank you.