Our customer-facing production application, Chatico, is currently blocked because the Gemini API billing account remains stuck on Tier 1.
Exact AI Studio error:
“You’ve reached the billing account tier cap and service has been paused.”
Verified facts:
- Actual Gemini API spend this month: €312.31 — this is consumed usage, not merely a prepaid top-up.
- Tier 1 billing account cap: €219.45.
- First successful payment: August 3, 2026; substantially more than three days have passed.
- Positive prepaid balance: €353.35.
- Project-level spend cap: €1,500; only €312.31 has been used.
- RPM, TPM, and RPD limits are not being exceeded.
- No payment failure, depleted-credit, policy, or downgrade warning appears in AI Studio.
- Google Cloud Billing Support confirmed that the account spending is healthy.
The account therefore meets the documented Tier 2 qualification of more than $100 in actual spend plus three days from the first successful payment. Google documentation says tier upgrades usually appear within approximately 10 minutes, but this account has remained on Tier 1 for around 20 days.
Actions already taken:
- Submitted the official Gemini API Billing Account Spend Cap Increase form for Tier 2.
- Opened Google Cloud Support case #74659220.
- Supplied the billing account and project identifiers privately to Google Support.
- Requested escalation and a concrete restoration ETA.
This appears to be a backend tier-entitlement synchronization failure similar to the widely reported issue:
We urgently need a Google Gemini API team member to manually review/recalculate the billing tier, apply Tier 2, and restore service. End users are actively affected.
We can provide the Project Number and Billing Account ID privately by DM. We will not publish sensitive billing identifiers in this thread.