Firebase Functions billing in Blaze plan

[ManWithSteelNerves]

I'm constantly getting that i'm charged for CPU-Seconds and Memory used when in development. I would like to how exactly the billing works in Blaze plan with respect to free quota. It would be great to have a clear instructions as its very important for the paid users to understand how the billing works. Else it will go out of control and raise panic.

Last Month

Cloud Functions CPU Time: 4532 Seconds (0.000716637 INR per second x 4532 = INR 3.23)

Cloud Functions Memory Time: 2771 Gibibyte-seconds (0.000179159 INR per gibibyte second = INR 0.50)

As you can see 4532 seconds is way less than 400K seconds provided in the free quota. Even If its calculated daily, I will be allocated 13K per day. The same goes with Memory time too. The function invocations seems to match fine but the time and memory are getting charged.

I agree that the charged amount is very less but It will get very difficult for us if we are not able to estimate the costs for the app.

We request any one from the community or from firebase team to address this quickly.

Thankyou!

[Sam Stern]

Hi there,

You are right: users on the Blaze plan should still receive the same free quota (announcement).  So it looks like you should not be charged for this usage.  Since this is a billing issue please contact Firebase support who can investigate what's going on with your account.

- Sam

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebase Google Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to firebase-tal...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/cdfa8f39-314d-4758-93f9-c1ee2da7ee0a%40googlegroups.com.

[ManWithSteelNerves]

Thanks for the reply. Can you please confirm if you are from Firebase team?

I mailed the support team but unfortunately, they are not much informational. When I asked them the blog post says that in blaze plan we are allowed for some free quota, the support member says that firebase has some charges which can't be controlled!

Below is my request

I think there is fundamentally something that is being missed! I'm more worried now as we are going in two different directions (mainly i'm scared that I totally mis-understood the billing).

"The free tier on Blaze is not just the Spark tier numbers" - This seems to contradict what I have seen from your blog post.

In the blog post it was mentioned that 

For Cloud Functions, free usage on the Blaze plan is calculated at the billing account level, not the project level (multiple projects can be associated with a single billing account). The usage limits are 2M invocations/month, 400K GB-second/month, 200K CPU-seconds/month, and 5 GB of outbound networking/month.

It's very clear that i'm way below the 400K mark as listed above. But, still I assume I'm missing something as your team is more aware of the correct details.

I sincerely request you to kindly give a concrete information on free limits in Blaze plan. I upgraded my projects all to blaze plan and I don't see much control on the charges which is panicking me alot! 

And here is the response from them!

I understand you are concerned but I checked out and I did a really hard investigation to try to explain as clearly and in detail as possible the minor charges in your billing account. It’s important to mention that Firebase has been built over Google Cloud since Google acquired it. That’s the reason why the documentation about billing referred you to Google Cloud for more details and there are some charges that Firebase can’t be controlled. 

I know maybe this is not the answer that you expect but we always try to do the best to help our customers. 

I was just trying to get why there is a difference and the information they give is not sufficient at all. There should be some attention to the paid plan users as its very much important to understand the underlying costs involved.

I want someone from Firebase billing team to help on this as soon as possible,

Thanks.

On Wednesday, 4 March 2020 22:25:09 UTC+5:30, Samuel Stern wrote:

Hi there,

You are right: users on the Blaze plan should still receive the same free quota (announcement).  So it looks like you should not be charged for this usage.  Since this is a billing issue please contact Firebase support who can investigate what's going on with your account.

- Sam

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 8:45 AM ManWithSteelNerves <ayya...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm constantly getting that i'm charged for CPU-Seconds and Memory used when in development. I would like to how exactly the billing works in Blaze plan with respect to free quota. It would be great to have a clear instructions as its very important for the paid users to understand how the billing works. Else it will go out of control and raise panic.

Last Month

Cloud Functions CPU Time: 4532 Seconds (0.000716637 INR per second x 4532 = INR 3.23)

Cloud Functions Memory Time: 2771 Gibibyte-seconds (0.000179159 INR per gibibyte second = INR 0.50)

As you can see 4532 seconds is way less than 400K seconds provided in the free quota. Even If its calculated daily, I will be allocated 13K per day. The same goes with Memory time too. The function invocations seems to match fine but the time and memory are getting charged.

I agree that the charged amount is very less but It will get very difficult for us if we are not able to estimate the costs for the app.

We request any one from the community or from firebase team to address this quickly.

Thankyou!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebase Google Group" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fireba...@googlegroups.com.

[Geoffrey Bourne]

This is a good question. I'm actually trying to pull from the Google Metrics API the CPU-Seconds so I can track, but always get zero even though I'm incurring cycles and being charged.

I'm calling the Metrics Compute API: https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/api/metrics_gcp#gcp-compute

Specifically the "instance/cpu/usage_time" call. Any thoughts on is this the right API to call to get the CPU-seconds usage?

-GB

On Wednesday, March 4, 2020 at 11:55:09 AM UTC-5, Samuel Stern wrote:

Hi there,

You are right: users on the Blaze plan should still receive the same free quota (announcement).  So it looks like you should not be charged for this usage.  Since this is a billing issue please contact Firebase support who can investigate what's going on with your account.

- Sam

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 8:45 AM ManWithSteelNerves <ayya...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm constantly getting that i'm charged for CPU-Seconds and Memory used when in development. I would like to how exactly the billing works in Blaze plan with respect to free quota. It would be great to have a clear instructions as its very important for the paid users to understand how the billing works. Else it will go out of control and raise panic.

Last Month

Cloud Functions CPU Time: 4532 Seconds (0.000716637 INR per second x 4532 = INR 3.23)

Cloud Functions Memory Time: 2771 Gibibyte-seconds (0.000179159 INR per gibibyte second = INR 0.50)

As you can see 4532 seconds is way less than 400K seconds provided in the free quota. Even If its calculated daily, I will be allocated 13K per day. The same goes with Memory time too. The function invocations seems to match fine but the time and memory are getting charged.

I agree that the charged amount is very less but It will get very difficult for us if we are not able to estimate the costs for the app.

We request any one from the community or from firebase team to address this quickly.

Thankyou!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebase Google Group" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fireba...@googlegroups.com.

[Guanaco Devs]

Hi

I think it might be a misunderstanding, since January they started to charge the FREE Tier, but at the same time in the receipt they also make a credit for the same amount of the Free Tier.

This is my receipt from one of my projects from February where you can see at the beginning the charge and at the end the credit.

Then if you go to https://console.cloud.google.com/billing/ in the reports section you will see the credits being applied with a checkbox on the bottom right and below the total amount for the month how much of credits is included:

Thank You & Best Regards

Edgard Ochoa

Guanaco Devs

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/CAHafJBr%3DaX78bc0qm1DPnKqMzwB6yXr%3D2BP6Rzn4w3WmTUF_MQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kato Richardson]

Thanks Edgard; very interesting.

Geoffrey, ManWithSteelNerves: Sam and I are trying to get some clarification on what's happening here. Hang in there.

☼, Kato

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/CANxE3X6BoqWu%2Bp5QUVbDXyy8XvOoVUw8ehxKP8PSxU2NMJrXaA%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Kato Richardson |

Developer Programs Eng |

kato...@google.com |

775-235-8398

[Guanaco Devs]

@ManWithSteelNerves

Check your last receipt if you have a charge for Cloud Functions "Memory Time" and "CPU Time" I'd guess you also have a Credit for "Memory Time" and "CPU Time". They started doing this since January, maybe they do it like this for accountability purposes. But if you are under the Free Tier at the end you are not being charged. However if you exceed your daily limit any given day charges and credits might differ.

No, I'm not from Firebase Team, but I'm a Firebase User, hold on, somehow that makes me a Firebase Team Member 🤔😂

Join the UBV conversation in our Facebook Group

Thank You & Best Regards

Edgard Ochoa

Guanaco Devs

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to firebase-tal...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/08456274-bcaa-4ce7-af3a-46c088e8f361%40googlegroups.com.

[Guanaco Devs]

@Geoffrey Bourne

If you are talking about cloud-functions, I don't know API wise, however you could monitor from the Functions panel in the Google Cloud Console or the Billing Panel for a particular project, just make sure to uncheck the "credits" checkbox I highlighted in the previous email.

Join the UBV conversation in our Facebook Group

Thank You & Best Regards

Edgard Ochoa

Guanaco Devs

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to firebase-tal...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/2a04cad0-a967-4dcf-982d-3f62358faffc%40googlegroups.com.

[ManWithSteelNerves]

Thanks Geoffrey for the details!

I see the some balances under "Spending-based discounts" nullified it and hope its accounting the free quota over there.

But pretty confusing as the support team from billing replied "Thats the way it should be and can't be controllable". 

Will be waiting for a confirmation from Kato and Sam :)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/2a04cad0-a967-4dcf-982d-3f62358faffc%40googlegroups.com.

[Geoffrey Bourne]

Thank you Edgard. I actually am familiar with the console. I'm trying to use the API to automatically pull it. It should be possible based on the documentation, but I get no results for that call.

Hopefully Google can verify that these Metrics APIs will give CPU-Seconds.

I'm calling the Metrics Compute API: https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/api/metrics_gcp#gcp-compute

Specifically the "instance/cpu/usage_time" call. Any thoughts on is this the right API to call to get the CPU-seconds usage?

-GB

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/2a04cad0-a967-4dcf-982d-3f62358faffc%40googlegroups.com.

[Guanaco Devs]

Sorry Geoffrey I do not have experience with monitoring, until now. 

I just use Firebase Console, Cord Console, Analytics and the Cloud Console Android App to check my projects usage. 

Best Regards

Edgard 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020, 18:49 Geoffrey Bourne <gbo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Edgard. I actually am familiar with the console. I'm trying to use the API to automatically pull it. It should be possible based on the documentation, but I get no results for that call.

Hopefully Google can verify that these Metrics APIs will give CPU-Seconds.

I'm calling the Metrics Compute API: https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/api/metrics_gcp#gcp-compute

Specifically the "instance/cpu/usage_time" call. Any thoughts on is this the right API to call to get the CPU-seconds usage?

-GB

On Wednesday, March 4, 2020 at 9:23:17 PM UTC-5, Guanaco Devs wrote:

@Geoffrey Bourne

If you are talking about cloud-functions, I don't know API wise, however you could monitor from the Functions panel in the Google Cloud Console or the Billing Panel for a particular project, just make sure to uncheck the "credits" checkbox I highlighted in the previous email.



To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to firebase-tal...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/firebase-talk/9cd36c49-48e8-4da0-9821-814397ac7831%40googlegroups.com.