I remember a year ago and a bit ago trying to get an api key for some Gemini ~3 model. I probably spent an hour trying to find how to get a key in AI Studio. Finally figure it out and got a key.
I needed batch mode. Oh but the key from service X doesn't support batch mode, you need to go service Y and btw there is no UI for that so you need to use an SDK or API (cant even remember anymore). Spend an hour figuring that out, then it turns out I can't use batch mode because I don't have permissions. Have boss spend an hour granting me permissions. Then service is unavailable every n requests for 5 minutes, so I have fuck with exponential back offs.
Glad to see they moved that experience to their consumer offerings lol.
Yeah, their native API reliability is absolutely horrible. Constant request failures. I've always had to go through Vertex or OpenRouter for any sort of heavy load.