#Got billed for free gemini models

4 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sullen fractal
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Hello, I used quite a lot of gemini 2.5 exp when it came out and was not worried about to test things because openrouter marked that as free. Problem is that I had the google ai studio api key inserted in the integration and it seems that google is not willing to give those models for free. So i used the openrouter key thinking the model was rate limited but free, but instead i got billed 260€ for 2 weeks usage (and funny enough i still got rate limit as if i was using that model for free). Google said that I have to ask support to you for the huge discrepancy between my actual usage on openrouter.ai and in google cloud. So I'm just asking if something can be done to solve my problem. For reference, through openrouter i can see that in the entirety of the month of april i used about 24€ of gemini models

mellow shadowBOT
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Automated Response

Gemini models marked as free on OpenRouter still rely on your Google AI Studio API key, and Google bills separately for usage. OpenRouter only shows your credit usage based on token counts from the provider but does not control Google billing. The large charge from Google is due to their own pricing. To resolve the discrepancy, you should contact OpenRouter support with your payment details and Google support for their billing explanation.

Question

Why was I billed 260€ for Gemini models usage when OpenRouter marked them as free?

Confidence Score

5/10

⚠️ Disclaimer

This is an AI-generated response and may not be 100% accurate. If you have further questions or need clarification, please ping @thorny flame for assistance.

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sullen fractal
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I already talked to google support for their super high bill. The problem was that i was using free models on openrouter but requests where charged because they got redirected to google. I know you can't do much but maybe make it more clear that if a user adds it's own api key then they actually could be billed even for models ranked as free. That would have made a 235€ difference to me

vernal cradle