Gemini API Free Tier in 2026: Limits, Models, and When You Get Billed

The Gemini API free tier still exists in October 2026, but it’s narrower than it used to be. You can call Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemma 4 and several audio and embedding models for $0, with no billing account. Gemini 4 Argon, the image models and the video models are paid only. Google no longer prints per-model RPM and RPD numbers in its docs, and you’re only billed after you link a billing account and prepay at least $5.

Every fact below comes from Google’s pricing page, rate limits page, billing guide and Gemini API terms, read on October 22, 2026. Still need a key? Our guide to getting a free Gemini API key covers that step.

Is the Gemini API free?

Yes, partly. The Gemini API free tier gives every Google AI Studio project free input and output tokens on selected models, with no card and no billing account. Google describes it as “Limited access to certain models.” In exchange, Google can use your prompts and responses to improve its products, and your rate limits are lower than on paid tiers.

Three rules shape it:

1. Free is per model. Each model’s Free Tier column says either “Free of charge” or “Not available.”
2. Limits are per project. They apply “per project, not per API key,” so five keys in one project don’t give you five times the quota.
3. Billing switches it off. A project linked to a billing account is on a paid tier, and every token is metered.

Which models are on the Gemini API free tier

Here’s the Free Tier column for Standard requests on October 22, 2026, with paid prices per 1M tokens.

Audio fares better: Gemini 3.8 Live, 3.8 Flash TTS, 3.5 Transcribe and Gemini Embedding 2 all list free input and output.

Argon gets its own note on the pricing page: “Gemini 4 Argon is not available on the Free tier.” Our Gemini 4 Argon pricing breakdown covers its paid rates and the December 1 price change.

Watch the 2.5 models too. The models page says Google is “limiting access to the 2.5 models to users who have actively used them in the past.” Gemini 2.5 Pro and 2.5 Flash still show “Free of charge,” but a new project may not reach them. Google points new work to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash.

Gemini API free tier limits: what Google publishes now

Google publishes the rules, not the numbers. The rate limits page no longer carries a per-model RPM, TPM and RPD table. It sends you to the rate-limit view in Google AI Studio, which shows the active limits for your own project.

What the page does state:

• Three dimensions: requests per minute (RPM), input tokens per minute (TPM) and requests per day (RPD). Some models add tokens per day or images per minute.
• Any one limit trips you: “If your RPM limit is 20, making 21 requests within a minute will result in an error, even if you haven’t exceeded your TPM or other limits.”
• Daily reset: RPD quotas reset at midnight Pacific time.
• Previews are tighter: “Rate limits are more restricted for experimental and preview models.”
• No guarantee: “Specified rate limits are not guaranteed and actual capacity may vary.”

Free models also skip some features:

Check your real numbers in AI Studio before you design a retry policy. When you hit a ceiling, the API answers 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED; our guide to using Gemini 3.8 Flash for free shows backoff for the Flash models.

What the free tier costs you: your data

The free tier is free in dollars, not in data. The terms treat “unpaid quota on Gemini API” as an Unpaid Service, and for those Google “uses the content you submit to the Services and any generated responses to provide, improve, and develop Google products.” They add: “human reviewers may read, annotate, and process your API input and output.”

So keep customer records, secrets and anything under NDA off a free-tier key.

Two regional rules apply in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom:

• The paid-service data terms cover everything there, “including Google AI Studio and unpaid quota in the Gemini API.”
• You “may use only Paid Services when making API Clients available to users” in those regions. A free key is fine for your own testing, not for a product serving those users.

When you get billed on the Gemini API

You’re billed only after you upgrade a project. A free-tier project has no billing account, so nothing on it turns into a charge. The billing guide lays out the path:

1. Set up billing in AI Studio. On the Projects or API keys page, click “Set up billing” on the project you want to upgrade.
2. Prepay at least $5. New users default to Prepay: you buy credits ($5 minimum, $5,000 maximum) and usage is deducted in near real time. Some accounts are offered Postpay instead.
3. Land on Tier 1. An active billing account puts you on Tier 1, typically at once, with a $250 monthly cap and a $10 spend limit per rolling 10 minutes.
4. Climb by spend. Tier 2 needs $100 paid plus 3 days since your first payment ($2,000 cap). Tier 3 needs $1,000 plus 30 days ($20,000 to $100,000+ cap). Spend on any Google Cloud service counts.

What catches people out:

• The $300 Google Cloud credit doesn’t cover Gemini. “Starting March 2026, Gemini API usage costs are specifically excluded from the $300 Google Cloud Free Trial program.”
• Credits expire. Unused prepay credits expire after 12 months and aren’t refundable, except when you switch to Postpay.
• At $0, everything stops. “All API keys in all projects linked to that billing account will stop working simultaneously,” with HTTP 402 until you top up.
• Overages slip through. Billing lags about 10 minutes, so batch jobs and agents “may continue to consume credits beyond your balance.”
• Failed requests are free but count. A 400 or 500 isn’t charged, “however, the request will still count against your quota.”

A clean setup is two projects: a free one for experiments and a paid one with a project spend cap for real traffic.

Make your first free Gemini API call

With a key from a free-tier project, this REST call to Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0:

export GEMINI_API_KEY="your-free-tier-key"

curl "https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-3.8-flash:generateContent" \
  -H "x-goog-api-key: $GEMINI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -X POST \
  -d '{"contents": [{"parts": [{"text": "Explain HTTP 429 in one sentence."}]}]}'

A 200 with text in candidates[0].content.parts[0].text means the free tier served you. Don’t expect the same key to answer for gemini-4-argon: Argon needs a paid project. Keep the key in an environment variable, never in a commit.

Let your coding agent test it with Apidog CLI

Skip checking model IDs and limits by hand. With Apidog CLI, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or OpenCode can write a test case for the Gemini endpoint, run it against your free key and report any 429.

Set it up once:

npm install -g apidog-cli@latest
apidog login --with-token <YOUR_TOKEN>
npx -y skills add https://apidog.com   # pick your agent when prompted

Then give your agent one prompt:

In Apidog project <projectId>, create an environment "gemini-free" with base URL
https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com. Add a test case for
POST /v1beta/models/gemini-3.8-flash:generateContent with header
x-goog-api-key = {{GEMINI_API_KEY}} that asserts status 200 and non-empty
candidates[0].content.parts[0].text. Run it 5 times, 1 second apart, and
tell me if any run returned 429.

The agent reads the payload schema, validates its JSON, then creates and runs the case:

apidog environment create gemini-free --project <projectId> --base-url https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com
apidog cli-schema get test-case-create
apidog test-case category --project <projectId>
apidog cli-schema validate test-case-create --file case.json
apidog test-case create --project <projectId> --file case.json
apidog run --test-case <caseId> --project <projectId> -e <envId> \
  --env-var "GEMINI_API_KEY=$GEMINI_API_KEY" -n 5 --delay-request 1000 -r cli,json

Keep -n small: every iteration counts against your RPM and RPD. The same apidog run line with -r junit drops into CI; our walkthrough of Apidog CLI in Claude Code shows the full loop. Apidog’s Free plan covers up to 4 users, so a small team can share the project.

FAQ

Is the Gemini API free tier free forever? Google promises no end date. The pricing page lists “Free of charge” per model today, and not every model gets one: Argon and the image models are paid only. Re-check the page before you plan around it.

Does the Gemini API free tier need a credit card? No. Its only qualification is “Active project or free trial.” You add a card when you set up billing and prepay at least $5.

What are the Gemini API free tier limits per model? Google stopped printing them in the docs. Your active RPM, TPM and RPD per model are on your project’s rate-limit page in AI Studio, and RPD resets at midnight Pacific time.

Can I use Gemini 4 Argon for free through the API? No. “Gemini 4 Argon is not available on the Free tier.” Our Gemini 4 Argon free access guide covers the routes outside the API.

Will the $300 Google Cloud credit pay for Gemini API calls? Not for accounts opened after March 2, 2026. Gemini API usage is excluded from the $300 free trial, though the credit still works on other Google Cloud products.

How do I go back to the free tier after upgrading? Unlink the project from its billing account. It returns to the free tier and its free-tier model set.