Got hit by a €600 bill by Google Maps API
Just a heads-up to all of you who want to use the Google API's for your projects: don't be fooled (like I was) into thinking you'll be warned when you pass free tier usage of the Google Cloud API's.
I've been billed over € 600 for overzealous use of the Google Maps geolocation API for a side project of mine. I never got a word from Google, apart from a nice invoice.
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These stories are so common now that I recommend everyone to enable this feature: https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets, the first time they create an account in GCP.
↑ this 💯. It will alert you on all charges.
I use app engine a lot which allows me to run servers for free but you need to know the billing structure to understand what activity will incur cost. It takes a long time to learn. Also with newer project I have to enable billing to build the apps but when I know I'm not going to deploy that server in a while I will disable the billing for it when it doesn't use paid resources. That way it will not incur any cost. Also need to delete build images because that is not done for you and will incur storage cost.
I don't do maps in web apps anymore at all. I don't see how to monetize maps, you would have to monetize the product that uses maps to be able to cover the cost once you hit significant numbers. Only mobile has unlimited maps so if I need to do some map thing I'm gonna be making an android app at that point.
If you are just wanting to put single pin on a map though here is a way to do it without enabling billing, so it can scale freely. I use this for example to do "we are located here" type maps:
See output
Here is a list of parameters you can use to hack the iframe display. The limitation is you can put one pin on a map and it is static.
Setting 'Budget' on every new service provider should be the first step anyone does, even if you are running the project within the free-tier, even if you are running the project with their free credits which you've calculated to have 12 months runway.
You can try Leaflet.js instead which is a free open-source alternative.
Thank for sharing! I've been searching for Maps alternative for some time now but can't find one, ended up using Google Maps API. Guess I'll have to make a switch.
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Definitely better, I started using leaflet for projects over 6 years ago and never looked back. I don't even remember why I didn't want to use Google maps at the time but I'm glad I made that choice.
Switch to mapbox. Google pricing is ridiculous. We went from free to over £1500pm with google then down to around £80pm with Mapbox.
I've had good luck with this one: https://developer.here.com/products/maps
Contact support & ask for a one-time refund, let them know you thought that you had limits in place and you didn't know you could be billed so much for a hobby project.
AWS routinely refunds customers who get burned in similar situations. Google may have a policy of doing the same (its worth a try).
See my update but that's what I did indeed. And I just received the news that I'll get the full amount (May and June) back as a one-time courtesy
(I didn't even have any monitoring set up. I do now, naturally : )
One of my side projects.. i got hit with a $2000 bill from Microsoft for their text analytics API...
Heed my warnings, keep tabs on your API bills and set up limits.
Update: I just got word that they'll refund the total amount (€200+ in May and €400+ in June) as a one-time courtesy! 🥳
Totally agree with the other comments, first priority is to set a budget. Had it once with Azure where i had a chatbot and before i knew it i was paying a considerable amount for stuff i wasn't even gonna use at the moment of prototyping. Also sometimes it's very hard to find where to even turn certain functionality off.
Cloud pricing is dangerous!
Totally get this. I tried to set up billing alerts in AWS while testing it out, and I felt like I needed to go back to school and take a statistics class before using it :-P
I'm not even using Google Cloud for my app anymore, and just got a pleasant notification that my 3 cent bill for June has been paid. Oops, just having a little docker instance up there means I'm being billed!
These big companies can be a little forgiving. It doesn't hurt to e-mail them and say your side project went overboard and you're wondering if a refund is possible. Heard AWS is kind of forgiving to small devs.
I have pretty much gone to smaller providers with simpler billing for my side projects.
I just don't have the patience to spend hours figuring out how much a small project is going to cost.
Yeah, I use DigitalOcean for all of my projects. I have no interest in "Internet-scale" when I don't know if I'll have any users anyway :-P
I tried some cloud providers for a very specific need - video rendering. I have a slow video render process that works well with lots of RAM and threads, so I wanted to find the cheapest/fastest way to run it. Google and AWS both have services that can run a Docker instance easily, so I want to have that because, otherwise, it's running on my laptop - DO just doesn't have a cost-effective way to run a big job and shut it down quickly when it's done haha
You're right; I'm looking at the quota dashboard for GCP functions right now and I just don't understand what it all means :(
I'll hunt around for a guide on how to set up quota's in such a way that no costs are incurred.
Update: got an email from support and they hint at the possibility of dropping the charges 🤞
Nice! Hope they give you a refund :)
Also, I know switching sucks, but AWS has a free $1k credit for "startups" - they say there's an approval process, but I think they mostly give it to everyone who applies. I got it with little to show.
https://aws.amazon.com/activate/gettingstarted/
Definitely worth applying for, just to have it available :)
That's interesting! I'll definitely keep that one in mind.