Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

Posted by speckx 12/10/2025

Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration(ankursethi.com)

845 points | 349 commentspage 4

jwr 12/11/2025|

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.

bobjordan 12/11/2025||

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.

Arubis 12/11/2025||

Similarly to DeepSeek, this—more than dealing with different APIs and routing—is the problem OpenRouter actually solves for me.

intothemild 12/11/2025||

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.

ra 12/11/2025|

That's fine but you're missing out, and you're most likely paying waay more than you need to.

ipaddr 12/11/2025||

Missing out on nothing

phromo 12/11/2025||

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.

temp1611 12/11/2025||

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 :)

thecupisblue 12/11/2025|

>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).

Man, I tried going for the credits. I've organised meetups and conferences for Google, gave talks, been a part of Google Startup campus for years now, have been invited to participate in GDE program, and as I'm making a GenAI startup I decided "well, maybe time to try getting those 300k cloud credits, I've given them so much I'll surely get it".

Well, the first person I talked to, said I'm denied, because they didn't even check the websites I added in the description. They said oh I need to add it to another field for their team to see, told me to update it, but there is no way to update it. Then we had a second call, they said it's okay I can ignore that and pointed me to another person who will be my "account manager".

That person was absolutely uninterested into what we're doing, what we want and what we plan to do. They did not even care about helping us much until we reached 15k monthly spend or so, giving a holier-than-thou attitude and sounding like they're making lunch during the call. I'd rather have the call with an LLM at this point.

Then even though our website says our product relies on AI, it is impossible without AI and I explained to him how and why we train custom models and use their GenAI products - the person decided we are not an AI company and can only get 2k in Cloud credits.

The interaction left such a sour taste in my mouth that I will _never_ use Google Cloud in our product, as I do not want to have to deal with the Account Manager.

Simplita 12/11/2025||

I thought it was just me. The onboarding experience feels unintentionally hostile for new developers.

rvnx 12/11/2025||

Setting up a limit of spending is even more difficult

movedx01 12/11/2025|

Is that even possible? Last time I checked it wasn't, while it was possible with OpenAI. Since that moment(early this year) - OpenAI has removed that option and their "Project budget" feature turned from being a hard limit into an email notification.

h02 12/10/2025|

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.

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