alt Hacker News> We had a budget alert (€80) and a cost anomaly alert, both of which triggered with a delay of a few hours
> By the time we reacted, costs were already around €28,000
> The final amount settled at €54,000+ due to delayed cost reporting
So much for the folks defending these three companies that refused to provide hard spending cap ("but you can set the budget", "you are doing it wrong if you worry about billing", "hard cap it's technically impossible" etc.)
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That's actually crazy. So I can build a project I love, that does good, but somehow get in a situation where I'm accidentally paying 30.000€ (or 50.000€) to a big tech company? How is that fair? I mean yes, as a software engineer, you ought to reflect on all possible weaknesses, but there was a time when overlooking something meant something completely different than being down 30/50k. That is actually life-altering.
This should be illegal. If a contractor your hired to swap out a tile on your bathroom floor billed you for remodelling your back garden, you would obviously have the legal right to refuse that.
> The Gemini API supports monthly spend caps at both the billing account tier and project levels. These controls are designed to protect your account from unexpected overages, and the ecosystem to ensure service availability
https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#project-spend-...
It's like a fire alarm system that goes off 30 mins after the it senses a fire. Good stuff.
hard cap it's technically impossible
These companies can sell your personal information in a microsecond in an advertising auction, but somehow can't figure out how to give you timely alerts that stop their cash flow.
Big shock.
This is clearly setup for VC backed companies where shareholders don't care about spend as long as they can brag about investing in this cool start up at dinner parties. Normal and true business should stay away.
Shirky’s principle at work is all
Yet another good reason to use a pre-paid service.
There are many to choose from now, like Openrouter.com, PPQ.ai, and routstr.com.
I'd buy the technically impossible angle.
Even if you manage to get your microservices to synch every penny spent to your payment account at realtime (impossible) you still have to waiver the excess, losing some money every time someone goes past their quota.
Yeah, that the main reason I never use services like Google Cloud if I don't have to, it's impossible to have a hard cap, and anyone pretending to be an expert, is just off. Google says that they can't provide a hard cap because that would mean shutting down all your services..bla bla, but at least give users the option.