If you’re using Gemini 3 Pro through the API or AI Studio, you have until next Monday before it goes offline. Google’s Logan Kilpatrick confirmed on X that Gemini 3 Pro is being turned down on March 9, and the recommended path forward is Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview.
“PSA: we are turning down Gemini 3 Pro next Monday March 9th,” Kilpatrick wrote, adding that 3.1 Pro Preview improves on the areas that got the most criticism from the first Gemini 3 revision. He’s asking users to keep the feedback coming as the team continues iterating.
Much like any other change, there are some users who aren’t exactly excited for the switch.
On r/GeminiAI, one developer running Gemini Pro in production through both AI Studio and Vertex shared uptime screenshots from OpenRouter and ZenMux showing consistent 503 errors on 3.1 Pro Preview, sometimes lasting hours with no status page updates. “I’ve had to build retry logic and fallback routing because I can’t explain to users why their request fails at 2pm on a Tuesday,” they noted.
Kilpatrick acknowledged the instability directly after others also raised concerns under the X post, saying the infrastructure team is “battling right now” given the spike in demand.
The logic behind killing 3 Pro on a hard deadline seems tied to compute: taking the older model offline should free up resources and help stabilize 3.1 Pro Preview. A few Reddit users pointed to this same theory, and it’s the most reasonable explanation on the table.
There’s also a date discrepancy floating around. Some Vertex AI users received emails pointing to March 23 as the cutoff, not March 9. Kilpatrick clarified that AI Studio is moving faster, since Google needs to defragment compute as soon as possible. If you’re on Vertex, you might have a bit more time, but AI Studio users should treat March 9 as the firm deadline.
On the model preservation front, a handful of developers asked Google to at least save the weights the way Anthropic has committed to doing for its widely deployed models. Kilpatrick didn’t leave much room for hope: “we need to defragment compute so sadly can’t keep it around, the frontier presses forward.”
It’s worth noting that this isn’t entirely new territory. Back when Gemini 3.0 was getting ready to launch, Gemini 2.5 Pro users reported a similar wave of timeouts, hallucinations, and slow responses — and many suspected Google was quietly shifting TPU resources toward the new model. Whether that’s what’s happening now with 3.1 Pro Preview is hard to say, but the pattern does look familiar.
Either way, March 9 is the cutoff and it does not look like that is changing. If you are still on Gemini 3 Pro, now is a good time to make the move before it stops working entirely.
Featured image generated with AI
Dwayne Cubbins
2752 Posts
I cover fast-moving stories across apps, online platforms, and everyday tech — phones, wearables, consoles, and whatever else people are fighting with this week. Bugs, rollouts, scams, policy enforcement, and the occasional internet-culture rabbit hole are all fair game. My goal is simple — make confusing tech news readable. When I'm not working, I'm working out or chilling with my dog. Got a tip? You can find me on X @dcubbins.
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