This is a topic that has likely been discussed before, but I had trouble finding it on this forum.
I am currently on Google Cloud’s trial with free credits. At the end of it, I expect to only have personal projects that remain within the free tier limits and never should get billed.
Still, I read a few horror stories about people getting billed unexpectedly or keys getting leaked and leading to massive bills, so I am afraid.
Do I have any way to make sure that, once my free trial is finished, that I won’t get billed anything for sure? I would much rather have my projects stop once I am over the free limit than risk getting a surprise bill.
I set up alerts at $0 and $1, so I should be notified, but there is a delay and I understand that costs can go up very quickly and that I may not always check my mails…
The safest way to ensure you aren’t billed after your Google Cloud free trial is to remove or downgrade your billing account once the trial ends. By default, Google Cloud will suspend your services when the free trial expires if you don’t upgrade to a paid account, so you won’t be charged. To be extra cautious, you can also delete any active resources (VMs, databases, storage buckets) and revoke API keys to prevent accidental usage or leaks. Alerts are helpful, but they don’t guarantee zero charges, so proactively stopping or deleting resources and unlinking your payment method is the only way to be certain you won’t get billed.
Google’s billing behaviors are weird and often inconsistent, I find.
In some cases, I notice Google might offer refunds (including partial) or adjustments based on your usage after your payment method gets charged, if you act close enough to that date. Though, I’m only speculating based on my previous experiences. I have received refunds on Google Workspace subscriptions after dealing with account issues that forced me to cancel and resubscribe, I know that. Google Cloud seems a lot more difficult to get support for, especially if it’s a billing issue.
I would try canceling your subscription after signing up for the trial. You should still be able to use the services until the trial ends, in that case. I would say to change your payment method after subscribing, or even removing it, but that would cause issues if your subscription was supposed to renew and you needed to cancel it manually, which might be the case with Google Cloud services.
My advice to you, is just to keep tabs on when your trial is meant to expire. Set a reminder on your calendar (app on phone or something) even. I feel you on the whole not always checking your emails thing, especially if your inbox is constantly getting stuff. Things get lost. I get my email notifications on my phone, so I’ll know almost right away if there’s a problem. But Google doesn’t usually give you a heads-up, like most companies.
Free trials are, in theory, supposed to be canceled but any corp will trap you into paying on the next cycle because you had to add payment method and agreed that it would be charged for the next billing cycle. Google’s no different.
Worst case scenario, a strongly worded email to whichever support channel comes closest to dealing with billing and/or customer service (count that one out tbh) with Google Cloud lol. Google support is responsive, it’s just finding the right support channel to contact, and Google Cloud is not really popping with average Joes so unless you pay for tech support, you’re left to your own devices haha.
