alt Hacker NewsI 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)
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I've to this day never been able to pay for Gemini through the API, even though I've tried maybe 6-7 times
If you bring it up to Logan he'll just brush it off — I honestly don't know if they test these UX flows with their own personal accounts, or if something is buggy with my account.
Most of them are correlating gemini-cli experience (trash) with the broader access to Gemini via studio or cloud (not at all a problem)
As the other comments pointed out, that's not covering billing...
But also the (theoretical) production platform for Gemini is Vertex AI, not AI Studio.
And until pretty recently using that took figuring out service accounts, and none of Google's docs would demonstrate production usage.
Instead they'd use the gcloud CLI to authenticate, and you'd have to figure out how each SDK consumed a credentials file.
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Now there's "express mode" for Vertex which uses an API Key, so things are better, but the complaints were well earned.
At one point there were even features (like using a model you finetuned) that didn't work without gcloud depending on if you used Vertex or AI Studio: https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/how-can-i-use-fine-tuned-mod...
Every aspect is at least partially broken several times a day, and even when there isn't a temporary outage of something somewhere, there are nonsensical "blocks" for things that ought to just work.
I've been using the AI Studio with my personal Workspace account. I can generate an API key. That worked for a while, but now Gemini CLI won't accept it. Why? No clue. It just says that I'm "not allowed" to use Gemini Pro 3 with the CLI tool. No reason given, no recourse, just a hand in your face flatly rejecting access to something I am paying for and can use elsewhere.
Simultaneously, I'm trying to convince my company to pay for a corporate account of some sort so that I can use API keys with custom tools and run up a bill of potentially thousands of dollars that we can charge back to the customer.
My manager tried to follow the instructions and... followed the wrong ones. They all look the same. They all talk about "Gemini" and "Enterprise". He ended up signing up for Google's equivalent of Copilot for business use, not something that provides API keys to developers. Bzzt... start over from the beginning!
I did eventually find the instructions by (ironically) asking Gemini Pro, which provided the convenient 27 step process for signing up to three different services in a chain before you can do anything. Oh, and if any of them trigger any kind of heuristic, again, you get a hand in face telling you firmly and not-so-politely to take a hike.
PS: Azure's whatever-it-is-called-today is just as bad if not worse. We have a corporate account and can't access GPT 5 because... I dunno. We just can't. Not worthy enough for access to Sam Altman's baby, apparently.
I did this same thing and this was my first result too. I am just not seeing how the author ended up where they did, unless knowing how to use Google search is not a core skill.
As the article states, generating the key itself is easy. But getting credit and billing are the issues.