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I'm spitballing here, but I suspect that (same with AWS) google uses post processing for billing, they run a job that scrapes the states THEN bills you for that. instead of the major AI companies are checking billing every API request coming in.

by jonfw8 hours ago|

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Yes, you are on the money. A cloud service provider needs to maintain reliability first and foremost, which means they won't have a runtime dependency on their billing system.

This means that billing happens asynchronously. You may use queues, you may do batching, etc. But you won't have a realtime view of the costs

by falcor847 hours ago|

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>they won't have a runtime dependency on their billing system

Well, that makes sense in principle, but they obviously do have some billing check that prevents me from making additional requests after that "final query". And they definitely have some check to prevent me from overutilizing my quota when I have an active monthly subscription. So whatever it is that they need to do, when I prepay $x, I'm not ok with them charging me more than that (or I would have prepaid more). It's up to them to figure this out and/or absorb the costs.

by coryrc5 hours ago|

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> they obviously do have some billing check that prevents me from making additional requests after that "final query"

No they don't actually! They try to get close, but it's not guaranteed (for example, make that "final query" to two different regions concurrently).

Now, they could stand up a separate system with a guaranteed fixed cost, but few people want that and the cost would be higher, so it wouldn't make the money back.

You can do it on your end though: run every request sequentially through a service and track your own usage, stopping when reaching your limit.

by lelandbatey3 hours ago|

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They do have a billing check, but that check is looking at "eventually consistent" billing data which could have arbitrary delays or be checked out-of-order compared to how it occurred IRL. This is a strategy that's typically fine when the margin of over-billing is small, maybe 1% or less. I take it from your description that the actual over-billing is more like dozens of dollars, potentially more than single-digit percentages on top of the subscription price. Here's hoping they tighten up metering <> billing.

by messe3 hours ago|

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Then the right thing to do from a consumer standpoint is to factor that overbilling into their upfront pricing, rather than surprising people with bills that they were led not to expect.