Spring AI with Gemini (Free Tier): Build AI-Powered Java Apps Without Spending a Penny If you've been working to add AI capabilities to your Spring Boot applications but didn't want to deal with billing accounts or complex cloud setups, this guide is exactly for you. Google provides a free tier for its Gemini models via Google AI Studio, and Spring AI makes consuming it surprisingly simple. No Vertex AI. No Google Cloud project. Just an API key and a few lines of Java code. Let's walk through everything from scratch. What is Spring AI? Spring AI is a framework that brings the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) into the familiar world of Spring Boot. Think of it like Spring Data, but for AI;