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Get a Google AI Studio (Gemini) API key

Google's Gemini API has a real free tier — 15 requests per minute on Gemini Flash, with no credit card required. That covers typical ad-gen volume completely free. This is the recommended starter provider for TrafficLoopback.

Heads up: Google's "Gemini API" is accessed via two different surfaces: Google AI Studio (the easy path, what we use here) and Vertex AI (enterprise path with Google Cloud project setup). For TrafficLoopback, you want the AI Studio key — it's simpler and the free tier is more generous.

1. Open Google AI Studio

Go to aistudio.google.com. Sign in with your Google account.

If this is your first time, accept the terms of service. You'll land on the AI Studio interface — a chat playground for Gemini models.

2. Create the API key

  1. Click Get API key in the left nav (or top-right corner depending on UI version), or go directly to aistudio.google.com/apikey.
  2. Click Create API key.
  3. Pick a Google Cloud project to associate the key with. If you don't have one, AI Studio creates a default project automatically — that's fine.
  4. The key appears on screen, starting with AIza....
  5. Copy it now. You can return to view it later but it's faster to grab it on first creation.

Security: the AIza key allows API calls billed to your Google project. Anyone with the key can use your free-tier quota or (if you've enabled billing) charge against your account. Don't paste it into chat, screenshots, or git. TrafficLoopback stores it encrypted in our database.

3. Free-tier limits

As of writing, the free tier on Google AI Studio is:

  • Gemini 2.0 Flash: 15 requests/minute, 1500 requests/day
  • Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite: 30 requests/minute
  • Gemini Pro: 2 requests/minute (slow but powerful)

Ad creative generation hits Flash for text and Imagen for images. Typical ad-gen workload: a few requests per ad, dozens of ads per week. You'll never see the cap. Google reserves the right to use free-tier data for model improvement — see their terms. If that matters, enable billing on the project (which switches you to the paid tier with no data-retention) — pay-as-you-go pricing is still cents per ad.

4. Add it to TrafficLoopback

  1. Sign in at trafficloopback.com/login.
  2. Go to Settings → API keys.
  3. Click Add key and pick Google AI Studio.
  4. Paste the key. Label it (e.g. Main) and set a priority (1 = highest).
  5. Save.

5. Encourage failover — add another provider

Google's Gemini API has had multi-hour outages — and the free tier's 15-RPM cap can be hit during heavy generation bursts. Always pair Google with at least one other provider:

  • OpenAI — best coverage for content Google's safety filter rejects
  • Anthropic (Claude) — most reliable provider in our experience; great for tone-sensitive copy

With two providers registered, TrafficLoopback automatically falls through on any Google error. See Why multiple AI keys for the failover mechanics.