Gemini API error 429: RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED

HTTP status 429, type RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED, with the message:

Resource has been exhausted (e.g. check quota).

The Gemini API enforces limits per project and per model on requests per minute, tokens per minute and requests per day. Passing one returns 429 with the status RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. Free tier limits are much lower than paid tier limits, and limits apply to the Google Cloud project behind the key, not to the key itself.

Is it you or them? Usually yours: Gemini uses this code for limits and billing on your account, which no outage checker can see.

• The free tier's per-minute or per-day limit for the model.
• Several keys or apps on one Google Cloud project sharing its limits.
• Bursts of requests, or long prompts that use up tokens per minute.

1. Retry with exponential backoff, as in the snippet below; per-day limits reset at midnight Pacific time.
2. Check the project's rate limits in Google AI Studio, and turn on billing to move to the paid tier's higher limits.
3. Spread requests out, or move work that can wait to the Batch API.

Retry with backoff

A retry loop that waits as long as Gemini asks, else doubles the wait with random jitter so many clients do not retry in step:

// Retry Gemini 429 errors with backoff and jitter.
const RETRYABLE = new Set([429, 500, 502, 503, 504, 529]);

async function withRetry(call: () => Promise<Response>, maxAttempts = 5): Promise<Response> {
  for (let attempt = 1; ; attempt++) {
    const response = await call();
    if (!RETRYABLE.has(response.status) || attempt === maxAttempts) return response;
    // Wait as long as the provider asks, else 1s, 2s, 4s... with full jitter.
    const retryAfter = Number(response.headers.get("retry-after"));
    const delayMs = retryAfter > 0 ? retryAfter * 1000 : Math.random() * 1000 * 2 ** (attempt - 1);
    await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, delayMs));
  }
}

RealUptime Errors takes errors from any Sentry SDK. Tag each failed call with the provider, status and model, and errors from the same code group into one issue with its count and first and last time seen, so a run of 429s shows up as one rising issue instead of a flood:

import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";

// The DSN from your RealUptime Errors project settings.
Sentry.init({ dsn: process.env.REALUPTIME_ERRORS_DSN });

if (!response.ok) {
  Sentry.captureException(new Error(`Gemini ${response.status}`), {
    tags: { ai_provider: "google-gemini", ai_status: response.status, ai_model: model },
    fingerprint: ["google-gemini", String(response.status)],
  });
}

RealUptime Monitor can check an API endpoint from several regions every minute and alert you when it fails, and the Gemini outage page can alert you when Gemini reports an incident. Both are free to start.

Start Errors free

• Gemini API error 503: The model is overloaded
• OpenAI error 429: Rate limit reached
• Anthropic error 429: rate_limit_error
• Every AI API error code we cover

Gemini's own reference: ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/troubleshooting. How our checks work: methodology.