Tried to log in to an old gmail account. Remembered my password perfectly. But it asked for a confirmation code from an old phone number I no longer have (something it never did before). No alternative recovery options.

This is why I keep shilling decentralized social recovery.

If you pay for Google One for a month, you can talk to a live human for customer support and they might be able to help

Software Engineer @ Cadence Design Systems. B4: Stanford EE / Illinois ECE

Google One gives you live human support, it's one of the features they advertise, I referred a friend when he had an account issue with Youtube Music for his family and they ended up fixing it for him.

But I agree generally, it's not a shortcut through their security practices, and if you don't pay, you get nada

Nope. That's not how the system for consumer Gmail works. It's 100% automated. Google Support can't help. It's technically impossible.