This week, Google Cloud announced the ability to set spend caps on budgets. This is a Big Deal. The new spend caps actually pause supported services when a cap is reached.
Since Firebase projects are Cloud projects, spend caps can apply to Firebase services, too! Specifically, these:
| Firebase product | Cloud product |
|---|---|
| Cloud Functions for Firebase | Cloud Run Functions |
| Firebase AI Logic | Gemini API or Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI) |
| Firebase App Hosting | Cloud Run (plus other services that don’t have spend caps, like Cloud CDN) |
| Firebase Extensions | Cloud Run Functions |
I set up spend caps on one of my projects and thought I’d share a bit about the experience.
Caps on multiple services
One thing that confused me in the spend cap setup flow was that I was only able to pick a single service (and the docs say “Spend caps are limited to budgets that are scoped to a single Google Cloud project and a single eligible service within the specified project.”).
What if I use Functions and AI Logic in a project? Do I need to pick just one? Thankfully, no. Even though a single cap only supports a single service, I could create multiple spend caps, one for each service:
Setting up a spend cap
I’ll leave the full setup instructions to the documentation, but if you’re curious, here’s what spend cap setup looked like for me:
- Create a budget, and choose “Spend cap enforcement”.
- Choose the service that backs the Firebase product you’re using.
- Set an amount.
- View the notification thresholds (trying to change them shows a popover “Spend cap notification settings cannot be edited”).
Set them up on your project
Read through Manage spend cap budgets (and especially Limitations) before making a decision, but even with the current limitations, this is a valuable new tool to prevent surprise bills.
And, just a reminder that Firebase’s Avoid surprise bills guide has other tips to, well, avoid surprise bills.