CostHex

Cloud bill incidents

Real bills that ran away, reconstructed from the people who got them. Each one covers what happened, why it cost so much, how it ended, and what to change so it doesn’t happen to you.

WhenPlatformWhat happenedBill
June 2024VercelViral growth hit an API on Vercel Functions, no spend limit$96,280
February 2026Google CloudStolen Gemini API key used for Gemini 3 Pro image and text calls$82,314
April 2024AWSUnauthorized PUTs to a private S3 bucket$1,300
February 2024NetlifyDDoS on one 3.44 MB mp3, about 190 TB in four days$104,500
March 27, 2020Firebase / Google CloudSelf-calling Cloud Run scraper made 116 billion Firestore reads$72,000