{"slug": "gemini-api", "name": "Gemini API", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI models and assistants", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 29, "warners": 13, "score": -4.571, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-11-12", "latest": "2026-10-27", "why": "this was the exact reason why I switched to Gemini API from OpenAI. OAI would make me wait up to 10 minutes for the first token", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 12, "compare": 0, "warn": 13}, "spark": [0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "this was the exact reason why I switched to Gemini API from OpenAI. OAI would make me wait up to 10 minutes for the first token", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "google.dev", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://ai.google.dev", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Gemini API"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 801342352, "item_id": 50083897, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50083897", "by": "godbox", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "this was the exact reason why I switched to Gemini API from OpenAI. OAI would make me wait up to 10 minutes for the first token", "excerpt": "And the most reliable. A year and a half ago this was the exact reason why I switched to Gemini API from OpenAI. OAI would make me wait up to 10 minutes for the first token in the most egregious cases. Gemini served me almost immediately every time.", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM inference", "switched_from": "OpenAI API", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 776320388, "item_id": 48520024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48520024", "by": "bachmeier", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use the Gemini and Mistral API free tiers. I have a Gemini paid API account.", "excerpt": "> The upfront cost is steep and the models you can actually run at home are weaker than what the frontier labs ship, so this only pays off if you can keep the rig busy with long running tasks where a slower, cheaper model grinds away overnight. Most people can\u2019t keep a home machine that loaded, and the hardware you buy today may look like a bad bet in a year. Oh, so this is not a post about AI coding at home. It's ab", "context": "", "use_case": "AI coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Coding at Home Without Going Broke"}, {"id": 739874784, "item_id": 46242174, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242174", "by": "empiko", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Consider using structured output.", "excerpt": "Consider using structured output. You can define a JSON with specific fields, and LLMs are only used to fill in the values. https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/structured-output", "context": "", "use_case": "structured LLM output", "switched_from": "", "story": "GPT-5.2"}, {"id": 738095408, "item_id": 46130963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46130963", "by": "reilly3000", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think that\u2019s generally a fair price for my time vs doing my own search queries at 1/100th the speed.", "excerpt": "GCP is sort of blending this into their Gemini APIs. https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/google-search You don\u2019t have to do RAG or use a serp scraper MCP, just add the Search Grounding tool to the APzi request and it does the rest at the model\u2019s discretion and $0.014 / search. I think that\u2019s generally a fair price for my time vs doing my own search queries at 1/100th the speed. It could get expensive for deep resea", "context": "", "use_case": "search grounding for LLMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 801357264, "item_id": 50084829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084829", "by": "sunaookami", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the API constantly spew 503 errors. This was so bad that I switched to OpenAI API instead.", "excerpt": "Huh? The constant failures in the Gemini API and overnight changes are well documented, there was a time from January to roughly July (maybe it still persists) where the API constantly spew 503 errors. This was so bad that I switched to OpenAI API instead. See e.g. https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/frequent-503-errors-service-unavailable-across-all-models/116450", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 778675072, "item_id": 48667192, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48667192", "by": "anigbrowl", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "First headache was a lot of delays and 'service unavailable due to excessive load messages'.", "excerpt": "So a couple weeks ago I decided to pay some money for the Gemini API cause I'd found myself getting a lot of use out of the free tier chat and figured they deserved some of my cash. First headache was a lot of delays and 'service unavailable due to excessive load messages'. Second headache was a lot of frustration with the Continue plugin in my IDE. Gemini chat suggests I try the Antigravity app. I do so. IT's OK. La", "context": "", "use_case": "paid LLM API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash"}, {"id": 764681840, "item_id": 47792615, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792615", "by": "zozbot234", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Google's own statements are extremely clear that", "excerpt": "Except that Google's own statements are extremely clear that \"leaked\" (i.e. public) API keys should not be able to access the Gemini API in the first place: \"We have identified a vulnerability where some API keys may have been publicly exposed. To protect your data and prevent unauthorized access, we have proactively blocked these known leaked keys from accessing the Gemini API. ... We are defaulting to blocking API ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764678768, "item_id": 47792423, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792423", "by": "zozbot234", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Why are we hearing about this again?", "excerpt": "> Google also has historically treated API keys as non-secrets, except with the introduction of the keys for LLM inference, then users are supposed to treat those secretly This was reported a long time ago, and was supposed to be fixed by Google via making sure that these legacy public keys would not be usable for Gemini or AI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156925 https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/troubl", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}]}], "who": [{"by": "PxldLtd", "context": "OP, author", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216907", "date": "2026-03-02"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["llm api", "ai interpretation", "llm inference", "ai api", "paid llm api", "ai coding"], "compared": [{"slug": "openai-api", "name": "OpenAI API", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "firebase", "name": "Firebase", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 740147152, "item_id": 46259197, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46259197", "by": "logankilpatrick", "date": "2025-12-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it is google/genai going forward.", "excerpt": "> 4. If you read about a new Gemini model, you might want to use it - but are you using @google/genai, @google/generative-ai (wow finally deprecated) or @google-ai/generativelanguage? Silly mistake, but when nano banana dropped it was highly confusing image gen was available only through one of these.? Yeah, I hear you, open to suggestions to make this more clear, but it is google/genai going forward. Switching packa", "context": "works on the Gemini API team", "use_case": "building with Gemini models", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791871", "title": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223311", "title": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50073879", "title": "Gemini 4 Argon", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46121870", "title": "OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261220", "title": "item 50261220", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289112", "title": "Gemini 3.7 Flash", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 5, "neutral": 4}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-04": {"warn": 4, "neutral": 2}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804179537, "item_id": 50261221, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261221", "by": "TealGrapes93", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "optional live AI interpretation powered by the Gemini API", "excerpt": "Xeno-Lens Universal is a lightweight browser extension that transforms webpage comments, articles, and social feeds (like X and Reddit) into informative alien behavioral telemetry and de-mythologized summaries. It uses a dual-engine architecture: a lightning-fast local heuristic engine for zero-cost analysis, with optional live AI interpretation powered by the Gemini API (can be switched to other model families as we", "context": "", "use_case": "AI interpretation", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 801357264, "item_id": 50084829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084829", "by": "sunaookami", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the API constantly spew 503 errors. This was so bad that I switched to OpenAI API instead.", "excerpt": "Huh? The constant failures in the Gemini API and overnight changes are well documented, there was a time from January to roughly July (maybe it still persists) where the API constantly spew 503 errors. This was so bad that I switched to OpenAI API instead. See e.g. https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/frequent-503-errors-service-unavailable-across-all-models/116450", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 801342352, "item_id": 50083897, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50083897", "by": "godbox", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "this was the exact reason why I switched to Gemini API from OpenAI. OAI would make me wait up to 10 minutes for the first token", "excerpt": "And the most reliable. A year and a half ago this was the exact reason why I switched to Gemini API from OpenAI. OAI would make me wait up to 10 minutes for the first token in the most egregious cases. Gemini served me almost immediately every time.", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM inference", "switched_from": "OpenAI API", "story": "Gemini 4 Argon"}, {"id": 788675696, "item_id": 49292231, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292231", "by": "krat0sprakhar", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Spend caps can now be set", "excerpt": "Spend caps can now be set https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/more-control-over-gemini-api-costs/", "context": "", "use_case": "AI API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 3.7 Flash"}, {"id": 778675072, "item_id": 48667192, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48667192", "by": "anigbrowl", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "First headache was a lot of delays and 'service unavailable due to excessive load messages'.", "excerpt": "So a couple weeks ago I decided to pay some money for the Gemini API cause I'd found myself getting a lot of use out of the free tier chat and figured they deserved some of my cash. First headache was a lot of delays and 'service unavailable due to excessive load messages'. Second headache was a lot of frustration with the Continue plugin in my IDE. Gemini chat suggests I try the Antigravity app. I do so. IT's OK. La", "context": "", "use_case": "paid LLM API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash"}, {"id": 776320388, "item_id": 48520024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48520024", "by": "bachmeier", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use the Gemini and Mistral API free tiers. I have a Gemini paid API account.", "excerpt": "> The upfront cost is steep and the models you can actually run at home are weaker than what the frontier labs ship, so this only pays off if you can keep the rig busy with long running tasks where a slower, cheaper model grinds away overnight. Most people can\u2019t keep a home machine that loaded, and the hardware you buy today may look like a bad bet in a year. Oh, so this is not a post about AI coding at home. It's ab", "context": "", "use_case": "AI coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Coding at Home Without Going Broke"}, {"id": 769329456, "item_id": 48083091, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083091", "by": "jwithington", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Yes https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#spend-caps", "excerpt": "Yes https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#spend-caps", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini API File Search is now multimodal"}, {"id": 764859216, "item_id": 47803701, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803701", "by": "Barbing", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "That mutually exclusive with our originating comment you think?: \"...I always paid for the resources I used. Just because you consume a lot of resources by accident that doesn't mean you shouldn't have to pay for it.\"", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764689808, "item_id": 47793113, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47793113", "by": "logankilpatrick", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We have spend caps at the billing account level and the project level (developer set) in the Gemini API now.", "excerpt": "We have spend caps at the billing account level and the project level (developer set) in the Gemini API now. There is up to a 10 minute delay in processing everything but this should significantly mitigate the risk here: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#tier-spend-caps By default, new Tier 1 paid accounts can only spend $250 in a given month.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764686337, "item_id": 47792896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792896", "by": "Leomuck", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "That's actually crazy. So I can build a project I love, that does good, but somehow get in a situation where I'm accidentally paying 30.000\u20ac (or 50.000\u20ac) to a big tech company? How is that fair? I mean yes, as a software engineer, you ought to reflect on all possible weaknesses, but there was a time when overlooking something meant something completely different than being down 30/50k. That is actually life-altering.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764681840, "item_id": 47792615, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792615", "by": "zozbot234", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Google's own statements are extremely clear that", "excerpt": "Except that Google's own statements are extremely clear that \"leaked\" (i.e. public) API keys should not be able to access the Gemini API in the first place: \"We have identified a vulnerability where some API keys may have been publicly exposed. To protect your data and prevent unauthorized access, we have proactively blocked these known leaked keys from accessing the Gemini API. ... We are defaulting to blocking API ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764680448, "item_id": 47792528, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792528", "by": "Maxious", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The Gemini API supports monthly spend caps at both the billing account tier and project levels.", "excerpt": "> The Gemini API supports monthly spend caps at both the billing account tier and project levels. These controls are designed to protect your account from unexpected overages, and the ecosystem to ensure service availability https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#project-spend-caps", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764678768, "item_id": 47792423, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792423", "by": "zozbot234", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Why are we hearing about this again?", "excerpt": "> Google also has historically treated API keys as non-secrets, except with the introduction of the keys for LLM inference, then users are supposed to treat those secretly This was reported a long time ago, and was supposed to be fixed by Google via making sure that these legacy public keys would not be usable for Gemini or AI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156925 https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/troubl", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 764673056, "item_id": 47792066, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792066", "by": "embedding-shape", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Considering the amount of repositories on public GitHub with hard-coded Gemini API tokens", "excerpt": "Considering the amount of repositories on public GitHub with hard-coded Gemini API tokens inside the shared source code (https://github.com/search?q=gemini+%22AIza%22&type=code), this hardly comes as a surprise. Google also has historically treated API keys as non-secrets, except with the introduction of the keys for LLM inference, then users are supposed to treat those secretly, but I'm not sure everyone got that me", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "\u20ac54k spike in 13h from unrestricted Firebase browser key accessing Gemini APIs"}, {"id": 762007138, "item_id": 47625446, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47625446", "by": "mrsmrtss", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "https://blog.barrack.ai/google-gemini-api-key-vulnerability/", "excerpt": "I see that it's fashionable to bash everything MS related in HN, but let's not pretend that the other major cloud providers don't have their own problems (e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/7cab4ec7-4712-4137-b602-119a44f771de or https://blog.barrack.ai/google-gemini-api-key-vulnerability/). We have had a couple of critical services hosted on Azure over ten years already, call me lucky, but we haven't had any major inci", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Decisions that eroded trust in Azure \u2013 by a former Azure Core engineer"}, {"id": 755691680, "item_id": 47230730, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47230730", "by": "emotixco", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Google acknowledged it as a P2 bug, still open.", "excerpt": "We've been running Gemini in production at Emotix (AI research platform) for a few months. Three issues kept hitting us: 1. MALFORMED_FUNCTION_CALL \u2014 Gemini's function calling silently breaks when tool arguments contain large strings. Google acknowledged it as a P2 bug, still open. Adding a JSON-escaping instruction to the prompt cuts it by ~90%. When that's not enough, falling back to responseMimeType + responseSche", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini-heal \u2013 rate limiting and MALFORMED_FUNCTION_CALL recovery for Gemini API"}, {"id": 755470513, "item_id": 47216907, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216907", "by": "PxldLtd", "date": "2026-03-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "generates visualisations using the Gemini API", "excerpt": "OP here. I posted an earlier version of PipeDream about month ago, I\u2019ve just released v0.3.0 which attempts to improve visual-consistency. PipeDream is a CLI utility that wraps the stdout of terminal games (like Frotz/Zork or Colossal Cave) and generates visualisations using the Gemini API. The early version just generated isolated images, which felt disjointed. I built a state-aware navigator and an AI director that", "context": "OP, author", "use_case": "image generation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: PipeDream \u2013 A state-aware AI visualizer for CLI text adventures"}, {"id": 752203714, "item_id": 47012732, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47012732", "by": "redasadki", "date": "2026-02-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "ran out of TPM quota from Google Cloud's Gemini API", "excerpt": "Here is a quick recap of my real-world experience installing and using OpenClaw. TL;DR Took a while to install and configure, even longer to connect to Telegram. Then ran out of TPM quota from Google Cloud's Gemini API after <100 chat interactions. Had problems and potential security risk due to hallucinations. I set up a \"claw\" user account (not admin) on my MacBook Air to isolate it. Looked for and implemented ever", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 749934369, "item_id": 46870898, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870898", "by": "idopmstuff", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Is there some theoretical risk that someone could get their hands on my Gemini API key?", "excerpt": "They only run locally on my machine, and they use properly scoped API credentials. Is there some theoretical risk that someone could get their hands on my Gemini API key? Probably, but it'd be very tough and not a particularly compelling prize, so I'm not altogether too concerned here. On the verification front, a few examples: 1. I built an app that generates listing images and whitebox photos for my products. Resul", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Two kinds of AI users are emerging. The gap between them is astonishing"}, {"id": 741375088, "item_id": 46335943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335943", "by": "johny115", "date": "2025-12-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "you should try figuring out all Google products where you can generate images and videos, even attempt to learn how they work, how does billing work, where it uses credits from or API costs charged to where, what are the differences between all the weirdly named products (AI Studio, Vertex, Whisk, ImageFX, Veo Studio, Flow, etc.) with seemingly overlaping purposes the product description of Whisk at https://labs.goog", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}, {"id": 741116227, "item_id": 46319764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46319764", "by": "reallynattu", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Built with TanStack Start, Recharts, and Gemini API.", "excerpt": "I built this to scratch my own itch \u2013 in companies we use different data services that produce charts in different styles, and unifying them for reports or presentations is a pain. Sometimes you have a CSV export, sometimes just a screenshot from a dashboard, and manually recreating everything is tedious. How it works: - Paste a screenshot, drop a CSV or JSON, or describe what you want in text - AI extracts the data ", "context": "", "use_case": "data extraction from screenshots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Screenshot2Charts \u2013 Turn screenshots or CSV into beautiful charts"}, {"id": 739874784, "item_id": 46242174, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242174", "by": "empiko", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Consider using structured output.", "excerpt": "Consider using structured output. You can define a JSON with specific fields, and LLMs are only used to fill in the values. https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/structured-output", "context": "", "use_case": "structured LLM output", "switched_from": "", "story": "GPT-5.2"}, {"id": 739673330, "item_id": 46229583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46229583", "by": "downsplat", "date": "2025-12-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "abstracting calls across three different APIs (openai, gemini and mistral", "excerpt": "Yeah at $WORK we use various LLM APIs to analyze text; it's not heavy usage in terms of tokens but maybe 10K calls per day. We've found that response times vary a lot, sometimes going over a minute for simple tasks, and random fails happen. Retry logic is definitely mandatory, and it's good to have multiple providers ready. We're abstracting calls across three different APIs (openai, gemini and mistral, btw we're get", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}, {"id": 739653952, "item_id": 46228372, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228372", "by": "rozap", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I wasted several hours this week going around in the exact same circles.", "excerpt": "I wasted several hours this week going around in the exact same circles. We have a billing account, but kept hitting a gemini quota. Fine. But then on the quota page, every quota said 0% usage. And our bill was like $5. Some docs said check AI studio, but then the \"import project from google cloud to AI studio\" button kept silently failing. This was a requests per minute quota, which was set at 15 (not a whole lot...", "context": "startup with a billing account", "use_case": "building an LLM app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}, {"id": 739649472, "item_id": 46228092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228092", "by": "jwrallie", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Having moved from one country to another, I tripped all kinda of anti fraud systems and the only way out was to share my ID with every other company. It\u2019s annoying but one common thing is that anti fraud systems seem to require humans in the loop, so it\u2019s better to give up and get back to it next day. The most annoying company I dealt with was Blizzard. I just wanted to play a game but it took days of back and forth,", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}, {"id": 739631392, "item_id": 46226962, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226962", "by": "msp26", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The specified schema produces a constraint that has too many states for serving.", "excerpt": "Hi if the Gemini API team is reading this can you please be more transparent about 'The specified schema produces a constraint that has too many states for serving. ...' when using Structured Outputs. I assume it has something to do with the underlying constraint grammar/token masks becoming too long/taking too long to compute. But as end users we have no way of figuring out what the actual limits are. OpenAI has mor", "context": "", "use_case": "structured outputs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}, {"id": 739605392, "item_id": 46225337, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46225337", "by": "obmelvin", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I don't understand the multiple posts / comments I've seen about this.", "excerpt": "I 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 (Ma", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"}, {"id": 739102032, "item_id": 46193877, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46193877", "by": "simonw", "date": "2025-12-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Might work if you set media resolution to high", "excerpt": "Might work if you set media resolution to high: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/media-resolution I tried it on one of the images, how did it do? https://aistudio.google.com/app/prompts?state=%257B%2522ids%2522:%255B%252217RN57M3oZUQhq4FXgHz1g9B8kpGuvTNe%2522%255D,%2522action%2522:%2522open%2522,%2522userId%2522:%2522106366615678321494423%2522,%2522resourceKeys%2522:%257B%257D%257D&usp=sharing,%20https://drive.g", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I failed to recreate the 1996 Space Jam website with Claude"}, {"id": 738096096, "item_id": 46131006, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46131006", "by": "dragonwriter", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Grounding with Google Search has extremely restrictive terms of use.", "excerpt": "The pricing may be reasonable, but Grounding with Google Search has extremely restrictive terms of use. https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms#grounding-with-google-search", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race"}, {"id": 738095408, "item_id": 46130963, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46130963", "by": "reilly3000", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think that\u2019s generally a fair price for my time vs doing my own search queries at 1/100th the speed.", "excerpt": "GCP is sort of blending this into their Gemini APIs. https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/google-search You don\u2019t have to do RAG or use a serp scraper MCP, just add the Search Grounding tool to the APzi request and it does the rest at the model\u2019s discretion and $0.014 / search. I think that\u2019s generally a fair price for my time vs doing my own search queries at 1/100th the speed. It could get expensive for deep resea", "context": "", "use_case": "search grounding for LLMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race"}, {"id": 734433056, "item_id": 45902066, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45902066", "by": "drivers99", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I had to figure out how to do it with Gemini API instead", "excerpt": "You can if you script the request yourself, or you could have a front end that lets you cut out those paragraphs from the conversation. I only say that because yesterday I followed this guide: https://fly.io/blog/everyone-write-an-agent/ except I had to figure out how to do it with Gemini API instead. The context is always just (essentially) a list of strings (or \"parts\" anyway, doesn't have to be strings) that you p", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM API calls", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article"}]}