# Gemini API Quotas & Rate Limits (Jul 10, 2026)

## Google Gemini API Key — 250 Requests/Day Hard Limit

The Gemini API key used through admin-ai (LiteLLM) has a **hard daily limit of 250 requests**. This applies to:
- `gemini-pro-latest` (used for subagents, vision, and some direct calls)
- `gemini-3.1-pro` (same quota pool)
- Vision/image analysis requests count against the same quota

**Error pattern:** `429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED — Quota exceeded for metric: generativelanguage.googleapis.com/generate_requests_per_model_per_day, limit: 250`

**When it happens:** After ~250 total requests across all consumers (subagents, vision, direct API calls). Typically exhausts mid-afternoon on heavy usage days.

**Recovery:** Quota resets at midnight UTC. Retry delay from error: ~7.5 hours.

## Mitigations

1. **Subagents use deepseek-v4-pro** — avoids Gemini's 250/day cap entirely
2. **Cron jobs use Ollama** (llama3.2:3b) for low-end tasks — free, no quota
3. **Vision falls back to text-only** when Gemini is exhausted — describe what you need instead
4. **Monitor usage** via admin-ai's spend dashboard

## Quota vs Credits

This is a **request count quota**, NOT a credit balance issue. Topping up credits won't fix it. The fix is:
- Upgrade Google API plan for higher daily limits
- Or route vision through a different provider (Anthropic's Claude vision, OpenAI's GPT-4o vision)
- Or accept the 250/day cap and manage usage accordingly
