The Gemini API rate-limits per project across three dimensions — requests per minute (RPM), input tokens per minute (TPM), and requests per day (RPD) — plus rolling 10-minute spend caps. Exceeding any single dimension errors even if the others have headroom.
Plus rolling 10-minute spend windows: $10 max (Tier 1), $200 max (Tiers 2-3).
Check which dimension fired: RPD (daily request caps) catches always-on agents that per-minute limits never would, and the rolling 10-minute spend windows ($10 on Tier 1) trip on bursts of large-context calls.
For light experimentation yes — it's the most generous free tier among the big providers. For real agent workloads the daily request caps end sessions mid-task, which is why it works better as a fallback than a primary.
Hitting these limits from an agent? The specific errors have dedicated fixes: 429 Too Many Requests — what it means & how to fix · Why your AI agent keeps getting rate limited (and how to stop it)
And if the limits themselves are the problem: this reference is maintained by Standard Compute, a flat-rate gateway with no RPM, TPM, or daily caps — heavy use is paced, never rejected. How that works →