Gemini API now stores requests by default for new paid projects

Gemini API now stores requests by default for new paid projects

26 October 2026: Google has switched request storage on by default for new paid-tier projects that use the Gemini API's Generate Content endpoints. Its changelog of 26 October says that generateContent, streamGenerateContent and batchGenerateContent calls from new projects now store requests (store=true), matching the newer Interactions API; existing projects keep their current setting.

Not yet independently verified. This rests on Google's changelog and its Logs and datasets page. We have not checked how stored logs are treated under Google's paid-service data terms, which the changelog does not discuss. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Stored requests appear as logs in the Logs and Datasets dashboard of Google AI Studio. Google's documentation says a log holds the full prompt and the model's response, along with the context from previous turns.

How long the logs are kept

Logs expire and are marked for deletion after a default retention window of 55 days. A project can shorten that to 7, 14 or 28 days, but not lengthen it. Logs that someone saves into a dataset are kept until deleted, because datasets do not expire, and datasets can be exported as CSV or JSONL or to Google Sheets.

Google also invites developers to share datasets with it as demonstration examples for Gemini research and development. That is an explicit opt-in step, separate from logging itself.

Logging does not yet cover everything. Google lists Imagen and Veo models, Gemini embedding models, the Gemini Robotics model, inputs containing videos, GIFs or PDFs, and public preview agents as unsupported.

Why the default matters

For a developer debugging prompts, stored logs are useful: they show exactly what the model received and returned. For a business sending customer records, contracts or health data through the API, a default that keeps full prompts for 55 days changes the data map. A team that created its project before 26 October will see no change, but a new project created this week for a new product, or by a different team, starts with storage on.

The change also affects anyone who has told customers or auditors that prompts to Gemini are not retained, a statement that may have been accurate for older projects and is not automatically true for new ones.

Turning it off

There are two ways to opt out. Individual requests can set store=false, which suits applications that log some calls and not others. Or a project owner can turn off Generate Content API logging in the Settings panel of the Logs and Datasets dashboard, which covers every call from that project.

Teams that need the logs should at least set the retention window to the shortest period that serves them, and check who in the project can create and export datasets, since saved datasets outlive the retention window. This follows Google's price change for Gemini 4 Argon on 1 December. Our AI model board lists 139 models with their published prices.

Sources

• Google AI for Developers: Gemini API changelog, 26 October 2026 entry, 26 October 2026
• Google AI for Developers: Logs and datasets, 26 October 2026