Gemini API cost suddenly skyrocketed

Upon further inspeection I noticed that anomaly is related to this

But we never use image generation, we only generate text output. Furthermore we never use this model of gemini, we use 2.0 flash and 2.0 flash lite

Does anybody know how can I reach real support for this issue, not chatbots?

We got an similar large charge for this SKU on our end for yesterday (08-23). We are not using image generation at all. The charge is significant (eg. 5x our daily usage on Gemini).
Hoping it is an Google issue, will escalate on Monday if the charge is not removed.

Not happy to hear that it’s also happening to you guys, but since this is already two cases of the same issue I’m pretty confident that this is on Google’s end. We also dont use image generation at all. Just talked to Google’s billing support they said they will escalate this to their technical team. I really hope we will get some resolution soon.

Van1222 August 24, 2025, 4:05am 6

We met the same problem on 08/23/2025, and did not use Gemini image generation at all. We have reported it to Google Cloud billing support and are waiting for further investigation result.

This has happened to all my projects as well. The increase is 40x for me! (August 23, 2025)
Generate_content image output token count for Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Image Generation while my projects don’t use flash image generation at all!

I don’t know that as I got as well just chatbot support yesterday evening…
But I can confirm this issue as I have the same one and started some research.
‘The analysis confirms that the billing anomaly is not an isolated incident but a widespread, systemic issue affecting multiple developers as of August 23, 2025. The charges are the result of a significant bug within Google’s billing and metering system, which is miscategorizing internal, multimodal “thinking” tokens as high-cost “image output” tokens. This technical issue is compounded by a recent and substantial, though subtly communicated, price increase for Gemini 2.5 Flash’s text output. The user’s 10x cost increase is a direct consequence of this underlying price shift, amplified by the bug’s misattribution of high-volume activity to an expensive billing category…’

The same happened to my project.

We encountered the same problem… it seems that the service we were forced to use costs ~$25 per milion tokens

lioncodes August 24, 2025, 11:41am 11

preston August 24, 2025, 11:50am 12

I used the Gemini API for the first time ever, to test with my flow how it works. With about 80K input token usage for 2.5 Flash my bill is around $7, which is extremely high. I would expect it to be around 15 cents.

Added an incident to the status dashboard, all charges for this will be refunded asap, sorry for the hassle here: AI Studio Status Dashboard

I was charged $8 in a single day even though my usage was under 40K tokens. There’s no way to reach customer support to clarify the billing, which is very frustrating. I thought Google wouldn’t have this problem, but here it is. I’m leaving Gemini and switching to another provider.

The exact same thing happened to me. I have never used image generation and suddenly Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Image Generation appeared. I have deleted my API key just to make sure.

Same issue here. Good wake up call to set up a budget

unomode August 24, 2025, 10:40pm 17

Same issue, getting billed for gemini flash 2.0 image generation when i’m not using this in my apps (only using flash for image ANALYSIS and text).

There’s no difference between the first screenshot and this one. What do you suggest I do? Should I temporarily pause the projects?

We’re experiencing the same issue. Our costs for Gemini API also spiked unexpectedly, and we’re not using any image generation at all.

user2450 August 25, 2025, 2:09am 20

i nhave the same issue