Billing issues with google geocoding api - google-api

Billing was added to our gmaps-api project. And the billing definitely propagated, as it was added around 4 weeks ago.
In the project dashboard, billing shows as available. However, when we try to adjust our quotas, it says that we need to activate billing.
We contacted just about every channel at Google and were told that there is absolutely no provided support for billing issues with developer APIs.
Us: "We want to give you money."
Google: "No, and we won't help you."
Has anyone else encountered billing issues with API projects, and if so, how did you resolve them?
--- update ---
Note: Finally a rep reached out. You can ONLY get around the quota by getting a Google Maps for Work license.
The billing option is just a false lead if you're looking to go above the quota.

So it seems there are 2 limits.
You can only geocode 2500 addresses per day without billing.
You can geocode up to 100000 per day if you provide billing but you are limited to 2500 per session.
I seem to have this issue as well. I have a billing operation setup but I need to set up multiple sessions in order to go above the 2500 limit.
If you want to go above 2500 per session then you need the "Google Maps for Work" license. Is that correct?

Related

Will google vision/natural language api start charging when the number of free requests are exceeded?

I am preparing my first batch of requests to google vision/natural language apis. I plan on sending enough requests to exceed the free quota. I do still have my $300 in free credits in my account. So my question is: when my script is running and passes the last free request, will google then simply start deducting from my balance and allow the script to continue running seamlessly, or will it stop the script and ask me for some user input?
Thanks
Straight Answer: No
Here is how the billing works:
Gives you a chance to use your monthly free quota
Once you use up your monthly free quota, Google will charge you
2.1. If you have credits, they will accounted for the billing first
2.2. If you don't have credits, you will be charged from the credit card

How many apps are allowed on a 'Hobby' Heroku plan?

A 'Free' tier Heroku account allows up to 5 apps. How many apps does a 'Hobby' plan allow for?
I have looked on the Heroku general pricing page, detailed pricing page, and on a few related pages e.g. 'Choosing the Right Heroku Postgres Plan', but I can't see any explicit mention of how many apps I can deploy
Could it be that a "Dyno" is in fact another word for an app? And therefore there is no limit on the 'Hobby' tier, but I must pay $7/app/month?
In case it's useful to someone else the answer is:
"there is a soft limit of 100 apps per (Hobby tier) account".
The quote comes from my email to Heroku support
Although the question was on the Hobby plan, there is an update now that lets you have more than 5 apps for the Free plan (which is one reason one might have asked this question).
If you verify the account by adding a credit card on file, you can have up to 100 apps on the (verified) free plan, and still the 5 app limit for unverified.
Source (Heroku link)
According to the new rules, one can at most 5 apps if the account is not verified (no credit card details). If you add your credit card, you can have as many as 100 free apps as your account is now verified.
If we talk about free dynos, it's 550 for un-verified accounts and an additional 450 for verified accounts.
Reference: https://www.heroku.com/free

LUIS is no longer free?

Luis is no longer free ?
I didn't open LUIS dashboard for 10-11 days. I'm seeing this now. They changed a lot of things there.
I must get azure key to get my LUIS app works ?
According to the pricing details, LUIS is not free. You are able to make 10K calls per month without charge, after which you are charged $0.75 per 1000 calls. Without more detail I am unsure of your second question. An azure key may be used to link LUIS to your bot.
Just to clarify LUIS has the same model as before, the new portal just highlights this information in a different way that's a little more confusing (we're working on it).
No Azure Account; free for 1000 requests/month using programmatic api key
With Azure, free for 10,000 requests per month (F0 plan in Azure)
With Azure, $.75/1000 calls
The thing that's new and confusing is the programmatic key with the low quota isn't connected to your app by default. We're going to fix that shortly.
Same happened to me. I had to create LUIS app in Azure and then provide key to LUIS application on LUIS.ai. But in LUIS app on azure, you can select the pricing tier as free if 10k calls per month suffice your application usage or choose paid plan according to need.
A start-key is default available with each LUIS model which can be used upto 10k calls per month
LUIS is free for Testing and Educational use. It is about 10000 conversations per month. However in production environment it has to be paid.
The important this is you can access LUIS feature via Azure or can independently integrate it into your application. The method of costing will depend on that as well.

Google Places API - quota increase (1000 to 150 000) only available for businesses?

I recently started an internship concerning Master Data Management in Talend. Part of the Master Data Management proces involves the cleansing of data. In my case I have to cleanse a few addresses. After doing some research I bumped into the Google Places API, which would do the trick for me. At first I wasn't aware of the so called quota limits that are bound to this API so I decided to read up on it some more. Basicly I have quite a few addresses to cleanse, so the 1000 requests per day limit won't cut it. As of yesterday I decided to increase that limit to 150 000 requests by verifying my identity using my creditcard. The requests were indeed increased to 150 000 but after a few hours my billing account was closed without warning and the limit went back to 1000 requests.
My question is: is the increase of the quota limit only available for businesses or are individual users eligible for it too?
I basicly filled in my own name as the name of the business when I created the billing account for my own project. That billing account is closed now. I really need that quota increase to be able to finish my project so I'm wondering if you guys are able to enlighten me. The image below is part of the form which has to be filled in to create a billing account.
for this amount of quota you have to identify yourself through your credit card and thats it. you can use this key for personal use or business does not matter . as the whole app has that much of search quota. no matter how many people install that app.
so the answer is it is eligible for individual users too.
thank you
You may have different terms in your country. We don't have VAT in the US, although we do have state-specific sales tax on some goods and services. I suspect that Google cannot offer this service in your country without a business tracking the VAT for it. I use the Google Search API with Custom Search Engines on both personal and business accounts from the US with just CC validation. You might look to see if there are Google services resellers local to you who can offer you the Place API.

Can I set a cap on costs in Windows Azure?

I want to set up a Windows Azure account.
I'm an MSDN Subscriber so I get it for "free" the first 16 months.
Still, Microsoft want my credit card number just in case I go over the free limit.
In theory, this means I'm writing a carte blanche to MS to bill my credit card.
I want to know if anyone has been using Azure and if there's anyway of setting it to simply stop working if it gets near the cap where it would start to cost me something??
Today, there are no usage caps you can place on your account. Regarding the credit card and carte blanche ability to bill you: you'd only be billed for overage beyond the "free" stuff. Microsoft recently instituted an email-alert feature that lets you know when you've used 75% of your available resources. I believe that went live a few weeks ago.
Simply put: you get 750 compute-hours monthly (metered on a 1-hour boundary). This gives you enough hours to run a single, small instance 24x7, as there are just under 750 hours in a month. If you leave two instances running full-time, you'll go over your allotment and be charged.
If you're just learning, the MSDN account is fantastic. Just remember to delete your deployment at the end of the day (or when you're done trying something out), instead of letting it run 24x7. With a bit of prudence, you'll easily be able to test multi-instance applications and avoid ever being charged.
You can also log into the billing portal from the Azure portal. This shows a very detailed breakdown of your monthly usage, and with a quick scan you'll see how you're doing regarding compute-hours.
I keep mentioning compute-hours but not storage or bandwidth. Unless you're doing some extreme development, I doubt you'll run into any storage or bandwidth overruns. Same goes for SQL Azure - stick with Web Edition databases (and only 3 databases) and you'll have no issue there.
I wrote two blog posts that might also be helpful when thinking about how to manage cost so you don't get charged:
The True Cost of Web and Worker Roles
Staging and Compute-Hour Metering
In addition to David's answer, I would also suggest maximizing your use of the local Azure runtime that comes with the SDK. You can create web & worker roles and blobs/tables/queues. Iterate there until you are happy with how everything works - then publish to the public cloud.
There is no charge for the SDK or the local runtime.
The December 2011 release of Windows Azure introduced a much revamped billing portal which, amongst other things, introduced the ability to cap spend on introductionary accounts and MSDN accounts.
Whilst you still need to provide credit card for your MSDN Account, all accounts are automatically created with spending limit of $0; a limit one can remove from the billing portal.
See - http://www.brianhprince.com/post/2011/12/20/New-Sign-Up-for-Windows-Azure-and-Spending-Caps.aspx

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