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Budget Alerts and Limit Quotas in Google Cloud Platform

GA4Dataform Core and GA4Dataform Community are free tools, but processing data in BigQuery will generate costs. To avoid unexpected expenses, it is essential to set budget alerts and enforce limits on your BigQuery usage within the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

There are two primary ways to avoid spent accident on GCP:

  • Set budget alerts to receive notifications when your spending exceeds defined thresholds.
  • Set limit quotas to restrict how much data BigQuery can process.

Both are relatively straightforward to configure. While this guide provides a brief overview, you can find more detailed tutorials or alternative methods through your preferred search engine.

By setting up budget alerts and quotas, you can effectively control costs and prevent unexpected expenses in GCP.

Setting Budget Alerts​

Budget alerts notify you when your spending reaches a specified limit. Follow these steps to configure them:

  1. Go to the Billing Account page: GCP Billing.
  2. Select the billing account for which you want to set up alerts.
  3. Open the "Budgets & Alerts" tab.
  4. Click "Create Budget".
  5. Follow the steps to configure your budget:
    • Name: Provide a descriptive name for your budget alert.
    • Scope: Define the scope of the budget (e.g., project-specific or account-wide).
    • Threshold: Specify the spending limit that triggers the alert.
    • Action: Configure when and how you will receive alerts (e.g., email notifications).

For additional details, refer to the official documentation on Creating and Managing Budgets.

Setting Limit Quotas​

You can also enforce quotas on the volume of data scanned in BigQuery. These quotas help avoid accidental spend.

Quotas reset daily at midnight. Here's how to set them:

  1. Navigate to the Quotas page: GCP Quotas.
  2. Filter on BigQuery services.
  3. Search for Query usage per day and select it.
  4. Click on "Edit Quotas".
  5. Set the desired limit, validate your changes, and submit your request.

To limit BigQuery daily spend to $19.5, set the Query usage per day quota to 3 TiB, as BigQuery charges $6.5 per TiB of data scanned (approx.). This ensures the total data processed by queries does not exceed the spending limit(3 TiB × $6.5).

For a comprehensive guide, check out the Google Cloud Quotas Documentation.