I self host. I also have no paying customers and negligible compute needs. It's free minus the power cost which is, again, negligible. If it was on docker on my main computer instead of 18 year old junk, it would probably be even less.
Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
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Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#12Stories like this scare me and why I stick to PAAS.
Isn't Google Cloud Run a PAAS?
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#13> Is App Engine still preferable purely for cost predictability?
How is Cloud Run cost not predictable?
It is fairly simple arithmetic in a spreadsheet to estimate the upper bound with # of max instance times the unit prices times the per-instance resources. Exactly the same as you do with App Engine standard & flexible environment.
> budget caps
Doesn’t exist in GCP and most cloud providers. You can fix the usage or hard cap the usage autoscaling, but not the spend incurred by the usage.
> What guardrails work that don’t depend on constant manual billing checks?
Start conservatively with max instances and instance resource, and iterate based on the actual performance and needs. Say, you know, put the number 1 in everything.
Do your capacity planning and cost estimation and understand them. “Solo dev” or not, you need these things to run the business. The root cause was that you outsourced your business and budgeting decision to LLM without verifying it and understanding it.
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#14I am all in on cloud, AWS specifically. I have been doing AWS consulting for five years.
But if I were doing a side project or starting a business, I would personally use a simple VPS. In my case I would use AWS Lightsail - it’s a simple fixed priced service with no surprises.
I’m not saying you should use AWS. But you definitely shouldn’t be taking advice from a chatbot when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#15Hetzner
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#16It's a bit like when I needed ChatGPT to help me revise an article yesterday, and it automatically toned down the harsh criticisms I had written about ChatGPT in the article. Asking Gemini how to save money on Google Cloud would likely yield similar results.
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#17You just did what some chatbot told you to do? One provided by the people whose profits you were trying to minimize?
I wouldn’t have expected that to go well.
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#18Wait you’re still paying $5 per day on an idle service?
That’s absurd.
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#19> I’d appreciate hearing what others would do differently. the answer is staring you right in the face: > I fed my setup, budget, and constraints as context into Gemini CLI > The commit message claimed “60% cost savings.” don't outsource your critical thinking to a chatbot. or, if you feel you simply must have the chatbot do this work for you, supervise it more closely. instead you ignored it for 6 weeks: > From Nov…
Multiplying complexity by nondeterminism. AI is going to democratize the way people don't know what they're doing.
Re: Google Cloud Run cost me $4,676 in 6 weeks with zero traff
#20With all due respect, what? First of all, thank you so much for obviously writing part of this via a Large Language Model. Second of all, what kind of argument is "The commit message claimed '60% cost savings'" - do you have any idea what you were actually doing? And lastly, addressing your question: > Do you set hard budget caps and accept downtime? If you have no clue what you're doing, yes! Especially for early pr…
Appreciate the directness, and fair point. That’s exactly what I find confusing about their setup and why I’m here trying to learn. A little more context: I’ve been on GCP for 4 years, App Engine for the majority of it. Expensive but stable. I’ve used Gemini in the past to reduce costs successfully, so this wasn’t my first attempt at optimizing. I take ownership of the outcome, but the config behavior still doesn’t m…
> the config behavior still doesn’t match my mental model
Could you -learn- how to self-host a version of your app to expand your mental model in doing so? You outsourced the thinking part to an LLM - a bag of words - and are surprised the outcome didn't just work?
> Google support hasn’t been able to clarify how to properly scope this either
More outsourcing of thinking, no? Is Plan A really asking the vendor selling you compute how to use less compute and make them less money, instead of figuring out how to use just enough of it yourself?
If you're taking ownership, who could have effected the outcome the most here? Maybe the person who keeps outsourcing thinking to LLMs, support requests, and forums? I'd argue ownership would look more like figuring out how to handle Top Cost #1 yourself and reduce burn rate, starting by doing less outsourcing.