Google's '5,000 free Grounded Search requests' is actually 166/day via a rolling 30-day window

ItalyExpat · reddit · 2026-11-13

A developer follows up on his earlier post questioning Google's billing, with real-world testing of the "Grounding with Google Search" free tier:

• The SKU catalog promises 5,000 free search requests per month (shared across Gemini 3+ models), but they are not granted as a calendar monthly quota
• Google spreads it via a rolling 30-day window, effectively 166 requests/day; uneven usage (e.g. averaging 500/day) pushes almost everything into the paid SKU, making the free tier nearly worthless
• Only by keeping a steady 166 queries/day do all requests land in the free tier — worth about $70/month
• After his thread, Google billing support refunded the overage without confirming whether the behavior is intended

Practical takeaway: rate-limit grounding queries evenly rather than batching them to actually use the free quota.

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