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 6

arihant 12/11/2025|

I think now the Google One AI Pro subscription directly works for raising limits on the CLI? But otherwise, there is an Individual subscription. The problem is it doesn’t work out of the box. You have to create a whole Google Cloud project and attach the API to it to get it to work. Otherwise the CLI would stop logging you in, which it did when the account was free. The worst part is if that cloud project had any code in it, CLI will use it as context on every prompt.

scirob 12/11/2025||

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

heystefan 12/10/2025||

I had the same experience. Plus you never know what's the best way to use eg. Nano Banana -- it works better in AI Studio versus their regular Gemini chat.

Aeolun 12/11/2025||

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.

kkarpkkarp 12/11/2025|

And exactly same here. I wonder how much money they lose because of this poor process.

I am not going to use Gemini API in foreseen future as I don't want to manage those keys anymore. No matter how good their model is

bambax 12/11/2025||

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.

brap 12/11/2025|

Leadership roles, especially in large corporations, often favor people who are opportunistic. They don’t care about the product, they want that promo.

And to win that promo you have to ship big and ship fast. So often times what you see is people delivering vaporware that has the appearance of high quality (lots of promises, looks amazing in the slides deck, carefully selected data shows great numbers, etc). It’s a gamble, and sometimes it pays off.

By the time people accept that it’s hot garbage, the leaders have already moved on to the next opportunity. And it’s not that they were able to fool their managers, because their managers are playing the same game on an even larger scale, so they care even less.

Of course, this is not always the case. But there is a bias, and it tends to show up more in large organizations (government, large corporations, etc.)

martythemaniak 12/11/2025||

1. I typed "How do I get a gemini api key" in my chrome bar

2. Firs line in the top result said "click here and then click the Get Key Button". I clicked the link and went to the page.

3. On the page I clicked "Get Key"

4. I named the key, then selected "New project" from the dropdown. I named the new project

5. I now have a key.

I actually timed myself, it took 34 seconds. This is a garbage ragebait post.

hollerith 12/11/2025|

You have a key that lets you chat with 2.5 Flash (often enough to satisfy my personal chat needs).

Now get a key that lets you chat with version 3 (Fast or Thinking) without severe rate limiting.

KerrickStaley 12/11/2025||

In my personal experience, OpenRouter makes it easy to call Gemini 3 Pro Preview and other frontier LLMs with very little setup. It’s great for projects where you want to compare different LLMs or have the flexibility to switch. It charges a 5.5% fee on top of the base API price so at scale you would want to switch to directly calling the provider.

dvorka 12/11/2025||

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.

arjunchint 12/11/2025|

We built an AI Web Agent on top of Gemini.

We actually created shortcut for the agent itself to go to AI Studio, create API key, and configure itself haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6ywfLrG_W8

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