alt Hacker NewsGetting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
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Hey! Very valid feedback on setting up a billing account. This is something I have been pushing for over the last 2 years at Google. The good news: setting up billing directly in AI Studio tested internally and will be shipped in January : )
Will follow up on some of the other threads in here!
The odd thing about all of this (well, I guess it's not odd, just ironic), is that when Google AdWords started, one of the notable things about it was that anyone could start serving or buying ads. You just needed a credit-card. I think that bought Google a lot of credibility (along with the ads being text-only) as they entered an already disreputable space: ordinary users and small businesses felt they were getting the same treatment as more faceless, distant big businesses.
I have a friend that says Google's decline came when they bought DoubleClick in 2008 and suffered a reverse-takeover: their customers shifted from being Internet users and became other, matchingly-sized corporations.
I wasted several hours this week going around in the exact same circles. We have a billing account, but kept hitting a gemini quota. Fine. But then on the quota page, every quota said 0% usage. And our bill was like $5. Some docs said check AI studio, but then the "import project from google cloud to AI studio" button kept silently failing. This was a requests per minute quota, which was set at 15 (not a whole lot...) but wouldn't reset for 24 hours. So then I kept making new projects so I could keep testing this thing I'm building, until eventually I ran out.
The only way we could get it resolved was to (somehow) get a real human at google on the phone because we're in some startup program or something and have some connection there. Then he put in a manual request to bump our quota up.
Google cloud is the most kafkaesque insane system I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Every time I use it I can tell the org chart is leaking.
Unfortunately Google's problem is the product is dictated by the architecture of the APIs and this is an issue for anything they do. At one point long ago every Google product was disjointed and Larry Page told everyone they needed to be unified under a single theme and login. Then over time with the scale of the company you become entirely dependent on the current workflows. To work around it, all of a sudden there's a new UI for a new product and it looks super clean right until you try do something with that login or roles or an API key that has to effectively jailbreak the flow you're in. Painful. It's why startups win. Small, nimble, none of that legacy cruft to deal with. Whoever is working hard to fix these problems at Google KUDOS TO YOU because it's not easy. It's not easy to wrangle these systems across hundreds of teams, products and infrastructure. The unification and seamless workflow at that scale is painfully hard to achieve and the issue is entirely about operating within the limitations of the system but for good reason.
I hope they figure out a lot of the issues but at the same time, I hope Gemini just disappears back into products rather than being at the forefront, because I think that's when Google does it's best work.
> The “Set up billing” link kicked me out of Google AI Studio and into Google Cloud Console, and my heart sank. Every time I’ve logged into Google Cloud Console or AWS, I’ve wasted hours upon hours reading outdated documentation, gazing in despair at graphs that make no sense, going around in circles from dashboard to dashboard, and feeling a strong desire to attain freedom from this mortal coil.
100% agree
Add me to the list of "saw nano banana pro, attempted to get an API key for like 5min, failed and gave up." Maybe I am a dummy (quite possible) but I have seen many smart people similarly flummoxed!
You can walk into a McDonalds without being able to read, write, or speak English, and the order touchscreen UI is so good (er, "good") that you can successfully order a hamburger in about 60 seconds. Why can't Google (of all companies) figure this out?
I don't understand the multiple posts / comments I've seen about this.
I google `gemini API key` and the first result* is this docs page: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/api-key
That docs page has a link in the first primary section on the page. Sure, it could be a huge CTA, but this is a docs page, so it's kinda nice that it's not gone through a marketing make over.
* besides sponsored result for AI Studio
(Maybe I misunderstood and all the complaints are about billing. I don't remember having issues when I added my card to GCP in the past, but maybe I did)
Hi if the Gemini API team is reading this can you please be more transparent about 'The specified schema produces a constraint that has too many states for serving. ...' when using Structured Outputs.
I assume it has something to do with the underlying constraint grammar/token masks becoming too long/taking too long to compute. But as end users we have no way of figuring out what the actual limits are.
OpenAI has more generous limits on the schemas and clearer docs. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/structured-outputs#s....
You guys closed this issue for no reason: https://github.com/googleapis/python-genai/issues/660
Other than that, good work! I love how fast the Gemini models are. The current API is significantly less of a shitshow compared to last year with property ordering etc.
I complained about this on HN recently and Logan responded and asked me to email him with feedback on how I'd like the experience to work (I didn't, sorry Logan, been busy :)) - Logan, to his credit, is very active everywhere reading and soliciting feedback. I think they're going to be giving it a pretty big bump on ux/ui of AI studio next month. It's easy to see he's a super smart guy trying to build something complex within a massive machine - given how focused on the product he appears to be, I have high hopes.
The article lightly mentions it, but how AWS and Google Cloud Console are so absolute nonsensical in UX and ease of use is beyond comprehension.
I always wondered how something like AWS or GCP Cloud Console admin UIs get shipped. How could someone deliver a product like these and be satisfied, rewarded, promoted, etc. How can Google leadership look at this stuff and be like... "yup, people love this".
Yeah can't figure out WTH is going on in google's AI ecosystem either.
They absolutely deserve credit for their free tier API keys though. That's unheard of in big cloud - an actual you can't shoot yourself in the foot with a life ruining bill thing. Can't recall what part of their product maze I got it from but it seems to do what it says on tin
Using metaphors is dangerous, but I would dare to say that big tech AI is like cement suppliers. It's too low level of a service. In civil engineering you have the option to contract value added suppliers that will give you prefabricated pieces in concrete or steel you could be using to build your construction.
I'm seeing a lot of AI firms building value added services on top of big tech "foundational" AI offerings. Value addition can start very early at a clear plans/billing structure, going through rate limiting, documentation and extra features that will bring stability or consistency to our AI enhanced products.
Going the other way around (I tried) and building things on top of big tech AI is challenging starting at the fundamentals as the OP described well.
There are plenty of ways to get access to gemini - a single google search took me directly to the simplest way (subscribe to Google AI Ultra) in one click: https://one.google.com/intl/en/about/google-ai-plans/
The author apparently found himself on a much more difficult path, one designed for enterprises who are already on google cloud, already have billing set up, etc. The fact that an individuals experience with an enterprise platform isn't great is predictable... That's why there are individual/consumer plans for this stuff.
Seems like the real problem is something about his account or credit card tripped some fraud detectors and he got stuck in a part of the system designed to prevent credit card fraud rather than facilitate legitimate use. I can certainly imagine that Google gets a lot of chargebacks from people who had their credit card numbers stolen to mine bitcoin or whatever on Google Cloud.
I have always found Google products incredibly confusing and difficult to use. I have had a very similar experience to this a number of times.
Similarly to DeepSeek, this—more than dealing with different APIs and routing—is the problem OpenRouter actually solves for me.
I had to warm up a Gemini API project worth a few thousand hours during weeks so that I could get to the tier that allowed me to carry out the workload.
How can you have any tokens if you haven’t finished your tokens?!
Try to get a Google Vertex API key working locally. It's even more complicated. Took me literally one full day to get the whole toolchain working (had to do some pauses out of frustration).
I only went through it because I got once 300 USD for free to spend on my Google Workspace account I/my business owns.
OpenAI API usage is so much easier.
Btw Google: Fix Google Console API usage dashboard... why is there a delay of 2+ days? Why cannot I see (and block!) the usage of the current day?
You literally cannot buy Antigravity with a non-personal Google account.
I read someone on here who is using Gemini via OpenRouter because it was the only way they could pay for it.
A few months ago, I had a frustrating experience with the Gemini API while building an AI chat app as a side project. I registered through AI Studio and set up billing via Google Cloud Console, which offered a free trial with $200 in credits or 3 months of API usage. After deploying the Gemini API for my project, I navigated through the numerous settings in Google Cloud Console but forgot to set a billing limit. That month, I was charged over $250 on my credit card, well beyond the free trial allowance. It was entirely my fault for not setting a limit and not reviewing the free trial terms more carefully.
That said, while setting up the Gemini API through AI Studio is remarkably straightforward for small side projects, transitioning to production with proper billing requires navigating the labyrinth that is Google Cloud Console. The contrast between AI Studio's simplicity and the complexity of production billing setup is jarring, it's easy to miss critical settings when you're trying to figure out where everything is.
In case it's helpful to anyone, https://openrouter.ai/google/gemini-3-pro-preview is useful to know about.
Adding another layer on top of Google's own APIs adds latency, lowers reliability, and (AFAIK) doesn't allow batch mode - but if that's tolerable, it avoids the mess that is Google Service Account JSON and Cloud Billing.
Think its a combination of factors.
- Google cloud is setup for big organizations. Not for individuals. All cloud providers are pretty much confusing in a similar way. - India has specific rules re cybersecurity and financial regulations that Google has to comply. (mandatory id verification and kyc compliance). Others have asked for an id check too.
From what confused me, if OP wanted to use a model, the easier way would have been to pay cursor/windsurf etc. and select that model. Usually that is how people try out a new model. Trying out a specific way means going through the norms every country imposes, and bloat in case of legacy products.
AWS and Azure have come up with their own models. If their future versions hit close to sota and people want to use it, many would end up in a similar loop (and woudl be easier to just use it from the aggregators).
The underlying issue here is that 3.0 is still in preview. Once it’s a GA model, you can just use your $20 consumer Ai pro sub and skip all the GCP stuff…
I love Google's product managers. I love product managers in general but Google's product managers are at a whole another level. And it shows.
I also tried to make Gemini work with opencode and after spending about an hour in various panels, billing settings, setting up access groups, project groups, and other paraphernalia, gave up. There is Google Cloud, Vertex AI, Oauth which works or does not depending on whatever, all the "groups" and other crap I don't need, overall I just failed.
Claude code just works.
Interesting perspective. I've mainly felt like i have 'American privilege' regarding the ease with which i open accounts of basically any sort on a whim, usually with little friction.
I had a similar experience. However I gave up before being able to pay. Repeated the story two or three times. This was work for a medium sized Corp and in the end we didn't even give gemini a chance because of this (performance was sufficiently good with competing providers) . Really hope they up their UX.
There is a lot of fraud with UPI, specifically social engineering to obtain UPI OTP codes.
Since the card and the account haven't been previously associated, that's probably a risk model saying a human needs to verify the account before activation.
Indian cards also (I believe) have a mandatory 24 notice period prior to money being pulled - giving fraudsters a 24 hour starting gun to spend like crazy. That makes merchants that provide variable cost service on credit products twitchy.
https://support.stripe.com/questions/background-on-indian-go...
I went through similar song and dance using a paid Gemini code assist “standard” level subscription. I finally got Gemini 3 working in my terminal in my repository. I assigned it a task that Claude code Opus 4.5 would quickly knock out, and Gemini 3 did a reasonably similar job. I had opus 4.5 evaluate the work and it was complimentary of Gemini 3S work. Then I check the usage and I’d used 10% of the daily token usage limit, about 1.5M tokens on that one task. So I can only get about 10 tasks before I’m rate limited. Meanwhile with Claude code $200 max plan, I can run 10 of those same caliber of tasks in parallel, even with opus 4.5 model, and barely register the usage meter. The only thing the Gemini code assist “standard” plan will be good for with these limits are just double checking the plans that opus 4.5 makes. Until the usage limits are increased, it’s pretty useless compared to Claude code max plan. But there doesn’t seem to be any similar plan offering from Google.
Yeah, then try adding more quotas to scale your usage; you will feel the pain! But, to be fair, it is way easier than the AWS Bedrock or Microsoft Azure!
The difficult process is on purpose. You're too small. You're just going to waste their customer support resources and only give them maybe a couple hundred dollars. They're hoping you give up and go away.
I thought it was just me. The onboarding experience feels unintentionally hostile for new developers.
I got a Gemini API key once. I was overcharged £350, took me ages to find a way to file a complain, and at the end they refunded me only the google charges and not the VAT.
Never again, thanks.
Maybe they want more free users to better train their models and don't care about the money (which they already have in plenty?).
In the grand scheme of things, paid users are minuscule. They are probably delighted because of all the free users.
Gemini API keys are an absolute delight compared to VertexAI. It’s like Google decided the most important part of competing with AWS was a horrific console.
The experience feels fragmented because Google has multiple overlapping developer consoles and product boundaries. Gemini just exposes that underlying fragmentation more clearly than other APIs.
I went through the same nightmare a couple of months ago; in frustration I sent a not very nice email to support. They did respond a week later, saying everything was "fixed". But by that time I had moved on, and will probably never come back.
But I wonder how it can happen that a bunch of obviously extremely smart people can create such absurd Rube Goldberg machines -- without the fun part.
Gosh, this story resonates so much with me... I had the exact same experience few days ago, desperately trying to get a small agent prototype working for a quick demo. I spent an good hour dealing with that pile of nonsense. Online payments and accounts management have been mastered for 20 years now, why do we still have to endure such things? It just kills me. The same goes with Azure (and all MS online-related services), if not even worse.
Agreed, only thing that kinda makes up for the huge number of steps is that the GCP build in Ai assistant is actually great at telling you what to do via CLI
I like using Gemini for general stuff,
I have that Gemini AI plan thing, and it's great. But I absolutely will not plug my credit card into Google cloud services, no way.. I know I can put guardrails up, but I just am terrified that I'll get a gigantic bill that I cannot afford.
Nope sorry no way. I want a simple $X per month sub.
Claude gives me that. Which is why Claude wins.
Yea, I went through this exact fiasco a few months ago trying to do the same thing. Or rather, I went through the first two-thirds of it and then gave up.
Google is the most political, extractive and dysfunctional cloud from a customer point of view.
1. Startup credits require multiple follow-ups, meetings, etc. And these reps have weird incentive structures (so they are trying to bypass each other to meet their quotas or whatever).
2. Billing is opaque, you get charged for things you haven't used
3. Support is outsourced - and it takes 4-5 exchanges with this external vendor come to the central issue (by then usually people just give up I guess)
4. Overall behavior from various Google staff has been high-handed - to say the least
Every other cloud provider has done better than Google in our experience - AWS, Azure, Digital Ocean, OVH - all of them are better to deal with.
I like to tell my team there are two G's in our life: (1) Google and (2) Government, and these days the second G often does better than first :)
Setting up a limit of spending is even more difficult
This is so true! But the adventure doesn't end there. I have 2 billing accounts from the past when I was building projects on AppEngine. Annual exercise to keep them alive (even if no action is needed in the end) is of similar complexity. Why do I need these accounts? Because I want to use Google services for which I don't pay.
This is exactly my experience with gemini, and exactly why I bounced on the stupid thing. I just don’t have hours to waste on Google’s stupid processes.
Google's interface, UX and information flow is complete spaghetti. You never know what you will find and where. There is no one you can call either. I suspect they abandon their products because 50% of potential customers abandon their cart due to the workflow.
Just wait until you find out that Tier 1 only gives you up to 250 requests a day, and if you want more than that you'll have had to have spent over $250 in Google Cloud spend, and your first payment has to be more than 30 days ago. I was going to build my side project using Gemini 3 Pro, but gave up after that.
I was recently (vibe)-coding some games with my kid, and we wanted some basic text-to-speech functionality. We tested Google's Gemini models in-browser, and they worked great, so we figured we'd add them to the app. Some fun learnings:
1. You can access those models via three APIs: the Gemini API (which it turns out is only for prototyping and returned errors 30% of the time), the Vertex API (much more stable but lacking in some functionality), and the TTS API (which performed very poorly despite offering the same models). They also have separate keys (at least, Gemini vs Vertex).
2. Each of those APIs supports different parameters (things like language, whether you can pass a style prompt separate from the words you want spoken, etc). None of them offered the full combination we wanted.
3. To learn this, you have to spend a couple hours reading API docs, or alternatively, just have Claude Code read the docs then try all different combinations and figure out what works and what doesn't (with the added risk that it might hallucinate something).