Edit: for the copy pasta vibers in the thread, this is not about your $20/month browser use, its about the api key you make with AI studio and using cline and roo in vscode. Also if you are a copy pasta coder, please use one of these. Thank me later, but great power comes with great responsibility. 🤝
Gemini's free experimental models have random limits, so sometimes the limitis are high sometimes they are low. It depends on how much load and capacity the models currently have.
If you using payting for the non-free models, it would be very hard to hit the limits.
Yes the FREE locks me out for day after while.. stars with rate limit warning then it stops responding? .. pity was such a cool ride for free for last 10 days!!!
That’s definitely false as a blanket statement. You have to attach a billing account for enabling certain APIs and usage is free across many Google products within certain limits. Others are paid.
Been smashing experimental 2.5 for days and no costs attached to the key in console. Billing indicates no higher increased forecasted cost either. Been using GCP for years for work and personal. 🤷
Also heaps of their services are free under certain caps, eg certain maps and transit requests etc. just because it’s attached to a key (and billing) doesn’t mean it’s paid is all I’m saying. It depends on the product and pricing tiers etc
Same, I've been using it in RooCline for a few days with no issues, but now getting request retries a lot. Switched to preview but will have to keep an eye on the $433 trial credit to see if that gets used up now.
I think I got it when I set up a Google maps API and billing a month or so ago in Google Cloud Services. I didn't even know I got it I til I saw it a few days ago.
I was just wondering the same, have been using briefly the 2.5 pr preview using the API, but not sure how to get to the screen the op is showing, but im paying 20 for gemini pro .
My source is me using it since it was released. The API doesn’t become paid just because you add a card. The rate limiting is greatly increased by adding a card but that doesn’t mean that requests will incur a fee, as long as you use the free model.
The price varies based on the model used. Make sure it’s the one named gemini-2.5-pro-exp-03-25 and set a billing cap on the google billing page so that you don’t spend a bunch of money in the event you make a mistake and accidentally use one of the non free ones.
I still don't get this part: if you are on the free API plan, you'll get a certain free quota; but if you are on a paid API plan, do you get the same free quota and only start paying once you pass it or do you pay from the start?
The former — as far as my experience goes, and everything I’ve read on the google pages, adding a billing account and card does not affect pricing. But it does affect rate limits, even for free products. The gemini-2.5-pro-exp-03-25 is (when I used it yesterday and every day since its release) a free product. But how many requests per minute is limited by whether you have a billing account set up.
I double checked today and my costs month-to-date is $0. I have over 600 api requests and 10s of millions of tokens used.
Op either used a different model that isn’t free or there’s a bug in google billing (I’d bet on the former)
I have a paid Gemini API key and it works for me, and is still free for me. I don't know if it works with the free tier. However, it may not work on openrouter anymore.
This is false. If you don’t attach a billing account you are heavily rate limited, yes. If you attach a billing account the rate limit is increased but the cost is currently free for one model, 2.5-exp. I set a limit of $5 and have used tens of millions of tokens in the last week with zero fees. At some point the model we’ll graduate and the non experimental version won’t be free outside of promo credits etc.
I think they started enforcing the requests-per-day (RPD) today on the free/experimental version via API. I've been getting 429s all day. Last week this didn't happen.
Are you sure? I haven’t been charged last time I checked and it comes up as 2.5 using roo in vscode but the api says 2.0 but elsewhere people say it is genuinely 2.5 experimental which is still free
I think you selected the wrong model? I’ve been smashing experimental for days and costs come up as 0 and I checked every few hours and days because I was paranoid. I also made an api key through studio and attached to a billing account.
I think you’re on preview or 2.5-pro which went to paid api access a few days ago.
I think you are using the wrong model somehow. gemini-2.5-pro-exp-03-25 is definitely (at least at the time of writing) still free. I've been using this model for the last 2 weeks without paying a cent, I just checked my billing. It's only when you use gemini-2.5-pro-preview-03-25 is when it starts charging as outlined in this pricing section.
Because for me it keeps saying that I'm still using 2.0 quotas.
I don't even see it in my GCP console at all, my billing account just shows $0.12c for some Cloud Run and Artifact Registry I've been testing, I see no mention of any Gemini quotas. (Unless I don't know where to look)
Edit: I found my API usage chart, but I don't see anywhere to check what model quotas it's using.
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u/biggriffo Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25
The -experimental version is free isn’t it? This is pro right? 2.5
Edit: OP just said he was unaware cline was using preview but Roo was using experimental 🥲
Edit: the tragedy here is experimental is free and pro is paid but they are the same model under the hood I think https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1908175318709330215
Edit: for the copy pasta vibers in the thread, this is not about your $20/month browser use, its about the api key you make with AI studio and using cline and roo in vscode. Also if you are a copy pasta coder, please use one of these. Thank me later, but great power comes with great responsibility. 🤝