Set up budget alerts for Firebase services

This page describes how to set up and manage alerts-only budgets when your Firebase project is on the Blaze pricing plan.

The instructions on this page are at a high-level with a Firebase context. For detailed information about alerts-only budgets, see the Google Cloud documentation.

Understand budgets

You can control your costs and avoid surprises on your bill by creating budgets for Google Cloud Billing. Budgets are general monetary amounts that you plan on spending each month, and they can either be alerts-only budgets or spend cap budgets.

Alerts-only budgets (this page)

If spending reaches set thresholds for your budget, then Cloud Billing sends email notifications.
Note the following:
- Budget alerts do not pause services. They're intended to help you monitor your costs and to alert you so that you can take action, if needed. For example, you might consider using budget notifications to disable billing on the project.
- When you upgrade to the Blaze pricing plan in the Firebase console, you're automatically prompted to set up an alerts-only budget. You can also manually set up alerts-only budgets in the Google Cloud console (as described on this page).

Spend cap budgets

If spending reaches set thresholds for your budget for a specific service, then Cloud Billing sends email notifications.
If spending reaches 100% of your budget for that service, then Cloud Billing pauses that service for the rest of the month.
Note the following:
- Spend caps budgets are only available for the following Firebase services: Firebase AI Logic, Firebase App Hosting, Cloud Functions for Firebase, and Firebase Extensions.
- You can manually set up spend cap budgets in the Firebase console or Google Cloud console.

Set up alerts-only budgets

Here's how to set up an alerts-only budget:

Make sure that you have the appropriate access.

You need admin-level access to the linked Cloud Billing account, specifically the Billing Account Administrator role on the Cloud Billing account linked to the project.
Navigate to the budget settings:
1. Access your project in the Firebase console, then go to the Settings > Usage and billing > Details & settings page.
2. In the Budgets alerts section, click Create first budget. This takes you to the Budgets & alerts page in the Cloud console.
  
  Note that if you already have a budget set up, you'll see it here instead of the "Create first budget" link.
Complete the following steps to set up a budget and an emailed budget alert:
1. Select an existing budget or create a new one.
2. Give your budget a descriptive name.
3. Set the scope for the budget alert, including the project(s) and service(s) that you want the budget alert to apply to. You probably want to select All services when getting started with budget alerts.
4. Set the Amount > Budget type using one of these options:
  - A set amount of money – use this type when you're first starting out or testing your app
  - An amount equal to what your project spent last month – use this type when your app is growing steadily and you don't want to keep updating the budget amount every month
5. Set up Percent of budget alerts.
  - For initial testing, try out several percentages, like 1%, 2%, 5%, and 50% of Actual.
  - For production apps, try out pivotal percentages, like 50% and 100% of Actual as well as 150% of Forecasted.
  Tip: Set a limited number of alert thresholds for your production apps. You want to be informed, but you don't want so many email notifications that you stop paying attention to them.
6. Set up who should get emails.
  - By default, anyone with the appropriate billing permissions gets the notification email (by default, Billing Account Administrators and Billing Account Users on the associated Cloud Billing account).
  - You can also send emails to other people on your team. This requires creating a Cloud Monitoring Workspace and then adding an email-based notification channel to the Alerting section of the workspace. For more information about this setup, visit Set up advanced billing alerts and logic.

If you set up a notification for a low Percent of budget (like 1%), you should get an email within a couple hours or a couple of days telling you that your project has hit that threshold.

Limitations of alerts-only budgets

The following are important limitations to understand about alerts-only budgets:

Alerts-only budgets do not pause services. They're intended to help you monitor your costs and to alert you so that you can take action, if needed. For example, you might consider using budget notifications to disable billing on the project.
Can accommodate various levels of scope. An alerts-only budget can be scoped at any of the following levels:
- An entire Cloud Billing account.
- One or more organizations, folders, or projects that are associated with your Cloud Billing account.
- One or more services, such as Cloud Firestore or Cloud Run functions (for Cloud Functions for Firebase).
- Resources that have a specific label applied to them.
Can accommodate various time ranges. An alerts-only budget can be monthly, quarterly, yearly, or custom time ranges.

If you have more advanced billing setup, you can find more details about alerts-only budgets in the Google Cloud documentation.

Avoid surprise bills

Spend caps