Limits and specifications of the Live API


This page describes various limits and specifications for using the Live API and its models.

General specifications and limits

  • Supported input and output: (for details, see media formats below)

    • Input: text, images (not PDFs), audio, video
    • Output: text (transcription) and audio (streaming)

  • Supported tools: function calling, Grounding with Google Search, Grounding with Google Maps

  • Knowledge cutoff date: January 2025

The Live API does not support generating structured output (like JSON) or the Count Tokens API.

Session-related limits

For the Live API, a session refers to a persistent connection where input and output are streamed continuously over a connection.

If the session exceeds any of the following limits, the connection is terminated. Note, though, the Live API provides some options (see below) to handle these session-related limits.

  • Session context window is limited to 128k tokens.

    Due to this context window limit, here are the approximate maximum session lengths based on input modalities:

    • Audio-only input sessions are limited to 15 minutes.
    • Video + audio input are limited to 2 minutes.

  • Connection length is limited to about 10 minutes.

    You'll receive a going away notification about 60 seconds before the connection ends.

Here are some options for handling session-related limits:

Learn more about managing sessions.

Rate limits

The Live API has rate limits for both concurrent sessions per Firebase project as well as tokens per minute (TPM).

  • Gemini Developer API:

  • Vertex AI Gemini API:

    • 1,000 concurrent sessions per Firebase project
    • 4M tokens per minute

Media formats

The Live API supports the following types of media:

  • Input: images, audio, video
  • Output: audio

Image formats

The Live API supports the following for image input:

  • Maximum images per prompt: 3,000

  • Maximum file size per file (inline data): 7 MB

  • Supported MIME types: image/png, image/jpeg, image/webp, image/heic, image/heif

Audio formats

The Live API supports the following audio formats:

  • Input audio format: Raw 16 bit PCM audio at 16kHz little-endian

  • Output audio format: Raw 16 bit PCM audio at 24kHz little-endian

  • Supported MIME types: audio/x-aac, audio/flac, audio/mp3, audio/m4a, audio/mpeg, audio/mpga, audio/mp4, audio/ogg, audio/pcm, audio/wav, audio/webm

To convey the sample rate of input audio, set the MIME type of each audio-containing Blob to a value like audio/pcm;rate=16000.

Video formats

The Live API expects a sequence of discrete image frames and supports video frames input at 1 frame per second (FPS).

  • Recommended input: native 768x768 resolution at 1 FPS.

  • Supported MIME types: video/x-flv, video/quicktime, video/mpeg, video/mpegs, video/mpg, video/mp4, video/webm, video/wmv, video/3gpp

Note that this specification makes the Live API unsuitable for use cases that require analyzing fast-changing video, such as play-by-play in high-speed sports.

Response voices

The Live API supports the following response voice options. For demos of what each voice sounds like, see Chirp 3: HD voices.

If you don't specify a response voice, the default is Puck.

Learn how to specify the response voice.

Zephyr — Bright
Kore — Firm
Orus — Firm
Autonoe — Bright
Umbriel — Easy-going
Erinome — Clear
Laomedeia — Upbeat
Schedar — Even
Achird — Friendly
Sadachbia — Lively 		Puck — Upbeat
Fenrir — Excitable
Aoede — Breezy
Enceladus — Breathy
Algieba — Smooth
Algenib — Gravelly
Achernar — Soft
Gacrux — Mature
Zubenelgenubi — Casual
Sadaltager — Knowledgeable 		Charon — Informative
Leda — Youthful
Callirrhoe — Easy-going
Iapetus — Clear
Despina — Smooth
Rasalgethi — Informative
Alnilam — Firm
Pulcherrima — Forward
Vindemiatrix — Gentle
Sulafat — Warm

Languages

The Live API supports the following languages. Learn how to influence the response language.

Language BCP-47 Code Language BCP-47 Code
Arabic (Egyptian) ar-EG German (Germany) de-DE
English (US) en-US Spanish (US) es-US
French (France) fr-FR Hindi (India) hi-IN
Indonesian (Indonesia) id-ID Italian (Italy) it-IT
Japanese (Japan) ja-JP Korean (Korea) ko-KR
Portuguese (Brazil) pt-BR Russian (Russia) ru-RU
Dutch (Netherlands) nl-NL Polish (Poland) pl-PL
Thai (Thailand) th-TH Turkish (Turkey) tr-TR
Vietnamese (Vietnam) vi-VN Romanian (Romania) ro-RO
Ukrainian (Ukraine) uk-UA Bengali (Bangladesh) bn-BD
English (India) en-IN & hi-IN bundle Marathi (India) mr-IN
Tamil (India) ta-IN Telugu (India) te-IN