Is the Google Direction API for android is free of cost?

Question

I am developing an android app in which I will show the direction from one location to another I have integrated it with Google Maps. So, now I am trying to use google direction API and already generated API key for that but when I am using it by doing https request in my browser it showing me the result: "Request denied"

Below is the response I am getting in the result. Is it necessary to enable Billing or I am doing it wrong? Because I will not request for direction again and again in my app, I will just hit the web service once and will use that response in my app in which I will show 2,3 paths from only one origin to destination

{
  "error_message": "You must enable Billing on the Google Cloud Project at https://console.cloud.google.com/project/_/billing/enable Learn more at https://developers.google.com/maps/gmp-get-started",
  "routes": [],
  "status": "REQUEST_DENIED"
}

Answer 1

It's required that you enable Google Billing for some Google API Services , this doesn't mean that you will get charged for those services; most of them have a free quota and when you go beyond the threshold you get charged, and how much? well, it depends. For some API or services you can use Google Calculator and for some others you need to check the product's page. For example for Google Speech API

So you can use 60 minutes without any issue but it requires that you have enabled the Google Billing to make it work.

For Google Direction API is: