Read the full post. Partway down you will see they agree with you that getting an API key is not hard.

Paying is hard. And it is confusing how to set it up: you have to create a Vertex billing account and go through a cumbersome process to then connect your AIStudio to it and bring over a "project" which then disconnects all the time and which you have to re-select to use Nano Banana Pro or Gemini 3. It's a very bad process.

It's easy to miss this because they are very generous with the free tier, but Gemini 3 is not free.