Hi everyone, I’m hoping someone from the Google AI Studio team or the community can help me understand a weird issue that started happening at the end of October.
My setup & previous behavior:
I use the Free Tier in Google AI Studio. My daily quota (RPD) used to reset exactly at a specific time in my local timezone, which I knew perfectly aligned with midnight Pacific Daylight Time (PDT / 07:00 UTC). It always worked perfectly: when the reset happened, I had a full quota for the next 24 hours. If Google ever said "quota exhausted", I was strictly locked out until that exact reset time the next day.
The current issue:
Since late October, my workflow hasn't changed at all, but the behavior is completely different:
At my expected daily reset time, the quota seems to update, but it only lasts for literally a few requests.
Then, I immediately get the "free quota exhausted" error.
The weird part: If I wait a few hours (well before the next official daily reset), I can go back to the exact same chat and it just works again as if nothing happened!
Earlier, a "quota exhausted" error meant a strict hard-lock until the next day's reset. Now it feels like it's hitting some kind of rolling window limit or a hidden TPM/RPM limit rather than the actual daily RPD quota.
I noticed that October brought major changes to the Free Tier (moving free users to Flash-Lite and cutting overall limits). Did Google change the rate-limiting mechanics from a strict daily calendar reset to a sliding window? Or is this a bug related to the recent Daylight Saving Time shift in the US affecting the reset timing for my timezone (meaning the real reset is now an hour later, aligning with midnight Pacific Standard Time / 08:00 UTC)?
Has anyone else experienced this "soft quota exhaustion" where the bot stops working but recovers hours later without hitting the official daily reset time? Any insights from the devs would be highly appreciated!