"Paid subscription but no Gemini 3 access"

[kamy333]

What happened?

"Paid subscription but no Gemini 3 access"

What did you expect to happen?

How is it that we have Gemini CLI and we have a paid subscription, but we don't have the latest model available Gemini 3 or 3,1? What is the difference between when we pay and when we don't pay? What are we getting more? It is very disappointing that we are not taken care of, even when we pay.

Client information

• CLI Version: 0.30.0
• Git Commit: d5a135b
• Session ID: 0cc1d06c-de42-470c-8c1d-111ac96f88a5
• Operating System: win32 v22.19.0
• Sandbox Environment: no sandbox
• Model Version: auto-gemini-2.5
• Memory Usage: 196.5 MB
• Terminal Name: Unknown
• Terminal Background: #0c0c0c
• Kitty Keyboard Protocol: Unsupported

Login information

No response

Anything else we need to know?

No response

[gemini-cli]

Found possible duplicate issues:

• Ultra subscription #13317
• Personal Ultra Plan No Access to Gemini 3 #13710
• Gemini Ultra Subscriber and being told don't have access to Gemini 3 Pro in Gemini CLI #13685
• Ultra Subscriber - No access to Gemini 3 Pro Preview on CLI #14837
• i'm paying for google ultra ai, yet my CLI won't let me use gemini 3 pro. This has been ongoing since the model was released. #14322
• Gemini CLI tells "It seems like you don't have access to Gemini 3" #13375

If you believe this is not a duplicate, please remove the status/possible-duplicate label.

[aaurelions]

Does Gemini 3.1 no longer work for Gemini Code Assist in Google One AI Pro?

[AadithyaAle]

Hey @kamy333! This is currently a known limitation. While you have a paid personal subscription (Google One), the CLI's programmatic access to the Gemini 3 developer models currently defaults to checking for an Enterprise Code Assist license. Personal subscriptions grant you access to the Gemini Advanced web interface, but the CLI doesn't natively route that tier to the Gemini 3 developer endpoints yet.

The good news is that you can bypass this and get access to Gemini 3 in the CLI right now using a free workaround:

1. Go to [Google AI Studio](https://aistudio.google.com/) and generate a free API key.
2. Since your logs show you are on Windows, open your terminal and set the environment variable by running:
   setx GEMINI_API_KEY "your_api_key_here"
3. Important: Completely close and reopen your terminal window so the new environment variable loads. Run the CLI, and it will bypass the subscription check, giving you full access to Gemini 3.

I actually just had a PR approved (#20422) by the core team to update the official documentation to make this access distinction clearer!

@maintainers - I believe this is a duplicate of #20415 and #20425 regarding the IneligibleTierError routing.

[kamy333]

@AadithyaAleBut Thank you for your response. I do have a question: if I use the API key, will it incur separate charges and not be part of my current paid subscription? Will it be billed separately and not count against the quota of my existing plan? Is that accurate? If so, it seems illogical. However, since I will be using an API to build, it might make sense to cancel my subscription. Am I right?

[AadithyaAle]

Hey @kamy333! To clarify how the billing works:
The Google One AI Premium subscription and the Gemini API are two separate ecosystems.

1. Google One AI Premium: This covers the consumer side, giving you access to the Gemini Advanced web app and integrations within Google Workspace (Docs, Gmail, etc.).
2. Google AI Studio (API): It operates completely independently and has its own tier system:

Free Tier: When you generate a standard API key, you automatically start here. It is completely free, has very generous rate limits for personal CLI usage, and will not incur any charges.

Pay-as-You-Go Tier: This is a paid developer tier for high-volume production apps. You would have to explicitly link a Google Cloud billing account to be charged for this. As long as you don't do that, you won't accidentally trigger any surprise bills.

Because they are separate, using the API Free Tier will not incur separate charges nor will it count against your Google One quota. They operate completely independently.
It's up to your usage preferences to decide to keep the Google One subscription just depends on whether you still want access to the Gemini Advanced web interface for your daily, non-coding tasks!

[AadithyaAle]

@kamy333 also just check for the previous possible duplicate issues so that you will get more info and idea about this issue for reference.