You want to migrate an application from Google AI Studio to Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI).
You have Google Cloud credits (e.g., the $300 Welcome Free Trial) that you want to apply toward Gemini API inferencing costs.
You need to unify your inferencing pipelines, IAM permissions, telemetry, and billing with existing Google Cloud infrastructure (Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, BigQuery).
You are deploying open-source orchestration engines (like OpenClaw or ADK agents) on Google Cloud VMs, and want the entire system to run under a unified Google Cloud billing structure.

Gemini API Comparison

Feature / Control	Google AI Studio (Gemini Developer API)	Agent Platform (Enterprise Gemini API)
API Endpoint	`generativelanguage.googleapis.com`	`aiplatform.googleapis.com`
Target Audience	Developers, startups, students, researchers building production apps.	Enterprise production, MLOps engineers
GCP Credit Support	No (GCP credits/Free Trial cannot be applied)	Yes (Fully covered by Welcome or custom credits)
Data Privacy	Data may be reviewed to improve Google products	Prompts/responses are never used for training
Security & IAM	API key, OAuth	Google Cloud IAM (Service Accounts, OAuth 2.0, VPC-SC)
Compliance & SLAs	None (Best-effort availability)	24/7 Enterprise Support, SLAs, HIPAA, SOC2
Throughput Options	Shared / Rate-limited	Pay-as-you-go OR Provisioned Throughput
MLOps Ecosystem	Basic prompt management	Model Registry, Model Monitoring, Pipeline Evaluation
Inferencing Scope	Global endpoints only	Both Global and strict Regional endpoints

See Google Cloud Documentation to learn more about the differences between the two offerings.

Migration Guide

Billing and Credits

Google Cloud Free Trial credits do not apply to AI Studio. To use your credits for Gemini models, you must route calls through the Agent Platform.

Create a Google Cloud billing account. You must provide a valid payment method during setup to verify identity.
If you are a new customer, ensure your $300 Welcome credit is active in the Billing Console.
Avoid Billing Surprises: To prevent automatic fallback to your standard form of payment when credits are exhausted, you should establish a budget alert:
- Go to Billing -> Budgets & Alerts -> Create Budget.
- Set the threshold to map to your credit limit or maximum comfortable spend.

Enable the Agent Platform API

You must explicitly enable the Agent Platform API on your target Google Cloud Project. Run the following command via your local shell:

gcloud services enable aiplatform.googleapis.com --project="YOUR_PROJECT_ID"

Authentication & Authorization (IAM)

User Auth

For local debugging or script execution, authenticate using Application Default Credentials (ADC).

Option 1 - Automated Script:

bash <(curl -sSL https://storage.googleapis.com/cloud-samples-data/adc/setup_adc.sh)

Option 2 - Manual Setup:

gcloud auth login
gcloud auth application-default login

Grant your user identity the required IAM role to perform inferencing calls:

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding "YOUR_PROJECT_ID" \
    --member="user:YOUR_EMAIL@domain.com" \
    --role="roles/aiplatform.user"

Service Auth

When running your application on Google Cloud infrastructure such as a Compute Engine VM, authenticate using the machine's attached Service Account. For example, the Compute Engine Default Service Account.

Grant the virtual machine's underlying Service Account the user role:

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding "YOUR_PROJECT_ID" \
    --member="serviceAccount:PROJECT_NUMBER-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com" \
    --role="roles/aiplatform.user"

Compute Engine Access Scopes: Legacy access scopes can override IAM bindings. When provisioning or modifying your GCE instance, you must verify that the VM access scope is configured to either Allow full access to all Cloud APIs (https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform) or explicitly includes the standard cloud-platform scope.

Use the Gemini API in Agent Platform

SDKs (Client Libraries)

You can continue to use the unified Google GenAI SDK (google-genai). This SDK works with both AI Studio and Agent Platform. You only need to switch the routing flags via your runtime environment variables to target the Agent Platform backend.

Set your target environment details:

export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT="YOUR_PROJECT_ID"
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION="global"  # Or your chosen regional endpoint
export GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_ENTERPRISE=TRUE

Now, your standard python code shifts from using AI Studio to Agent Platform without altering the core initialization blocks:

from google import genai

# The client automatically picks up the GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_ENTERPRISE=TRUE environment flag
client = genai.Client()

response = client.models.generate_content(
    model='gemini-3-flash-preview',
    contents='Hello world!',
)
print(response.text)

Agent Development Kit (ADK)

To call Gemini models in Agent Platform from an Agent Development Kit agent, follow these steps.

Authenticate to Google Cloud.

If running an ADK agent in Google Cloud (e.g. Agent Platform Runtime), use the agent's assigned service account. Alternatively, if running ADK locally, run:

gcloud auth application-default login

Set env variables. Ensure these are set no matter if your ADK agent is running in Google Cloud or locally:

export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT="YOUR_PROJECT_ID"
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION="global"
export GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_ENTERPRISE=TRUE

Initialize the ADK agent. You can use the same model string you used with AI Studio (e.g. gemini-3-flash-preview).

from google.adk.agents.llm_agent import Agent

def get_current_time(city: str) -> dict:
    """Returns the current time in a specified city."""
    return {"status": "success", "city": city, "time": "10:30 AM"}

root_agent = Agent(
    model='gemini-3-flash-preview',
    name='root_agent',
    description="Tells the current time in a specified city.",
    instruction="You are a helpful assistant that tells the current time in cities. Use the 'get_current_time' tool for this purpose.",
    tools=[get_current_time],
)

To learn more about integrating ADK agents with Agent Platform, see the ADK documentation.

Antigravity CLI

Google Cloud users can now access Antigravity 2.0, including the Antigravity CLI, with Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.

Install the Antigravity CLI to your local environment.
Start the Antigravity CLI.
```
agy
```
Follow the CLI setup prompts - select Use a Google Cloud Project.
Complete the OAuth flow in the opened browser window using your authenticated Google Cloud Workspace or user identity.
Copy the confirmation token, and paste it directly back into your terminal.
Follow the prompts to enter your Google Cloud Project ID.
Select your Google Cloud location (e.g. global).
Optionally, run the /model command to select a different Gemini model in Agent Platform.

OpenClaw

To configure an OpenClaw agent to use Gemini models in Agent Platform, Follow these steps.

Install OpenClaw using OpenClaw's official instructions.

⚠️ Important: OpenClaw 2026.5.28 currently has a google-vertex bug. Please use 2026.5.20 for now.

Ensure that the runtime where OpenClaw is running (e.g. GCE VM with Service Account) has the aiplatform.user IAM role - see Authentication and Authorization section above.
Get the project number from the user's project ID. Outside of GCE, run:

export PROJECT_NUMBER=$(gcloud projects describe "$PROJECT_ID" --format="value(projectNumber)")
echo "Project number: $PROJECT_NUMBER"

Within a GCE VM, run:

export PROJECT_NUMBER=$(curl "http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/project/numeric-project-id" -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google")
echo "Project number: $PROJECT_NUMBER"

From outside the GCE instance, generate GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS using the Google Cloud project number. Then, scp these credentials to the GCE VM.

mkdir -p ~/.config/gcloud
gcloud iam service-accounts keys create ~/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json --iam-account="${PROJECT_NUMBER}-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com"

Edit the configuration file that's usually located at: ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json. Ensure you prefix the Gemini model with google-vertex/.

⚠️ Important:
- Do not use Gemini 3.5 models, since OpenClaw's google-vertex provider does not support it yet. Older models work.
- When using the Gemini 3 Flash Preview model in Agent Platform, always set the location to global, NOT a regional endpoint.

{
  "env": {
    "vars": {
      "GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT": "PROJECT_ID",
      "GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION": "global",
      "GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS": "~/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json"
    }
  },
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "model": {
        "primary": "google-vertex/gemini-3-flash-preview"
      },
      "workspace": "~/.openclaw/workspace",
      "compaction": {
        "mode": "safeguard"
      },
      "heartbeat": {
        "model": "google-vertex/gemini-3-flash-preview"
      }
    },
    "list": [
      {
        "id": "main",
        "workspace": "~/.openclaw/workspace",
        "model": "google-vertex/gemini-3-flash-preview"
      }
    ]
  },
  "session": {
    "dmScope": "per-channel-peer"
  },
  "tools": {
    "profile": "coding"
  }
}

Restart OpenClaw.

openclaw gateway restart

Verify the OpenClaw connection to Agent Platform:

openclaw models status
openclaw agent --agent main --message "Hello world!"

agent-platform-migrate-from-ai-studio

Migrating from Gemini API in AI Studio to Agent Platform

When to Invoke This Skill