Demo Setting up Billing alert in GCP

Welcome to this lesson! In this guide, you'll learn how to set up billing alerts for your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account to monitor and control your spending effectively. Before you begin, ensure that your GCP account is configured correctly and that you are familiar with its billing details.

Why Set Up Billing Alerts?

When using GCP, especially with a personal account for learning and development, it's easy to leave resources running—like compute instances—that may exceed your free usage limits. Billing alerts notify you when your spending approaches specific thresholds, helping you avoid unforeseen charges.

Accessing the Billing Console

1. Log in to your GCP Console and verify you’re in the correct project.
2. Use the top search bar to type “billing” and select the billing option, which will open the billing console.
3. In the left-hand panel, click on Budgets & Alerts.

Creating Your First Budget Alert

1. If you don't have any budgets yet, select Create a Budget.

2. Name your new budget.

3. Choose the budget period. In this example, we will select a Monthly budget that applies to all services within your project.

   

4. Click Next and set your desired budget amount. For this example, input 10 US dollars. The interface displays historical cost trends on the left, and you may notice that recent spending (e.g., around 0.4 US dollars in previous months) is well below your $10 threshold.

   

5. Click Next to proceed to the alerts configuration. By default, three alert thresholds are set:

   • 50% of the budget (5 US dollars)
   • 90% of the budget (9 US dollars)
   • 100% of the budget

   If the 50% alert threshold is not necessary, remove it by clicking the delete option.

   

6. Define your alert method. Email notifications will be sent to the email address linked to your GCP account—so keep an eye on that inbox.

7. Click Finish to create your billing alert.

After completing these steps, you will receive an email notification whenever your spending exceeds the thresholds set for the budget.

Creating a Resource-Level Budget Alert

In addition to a general account-level budget, you can create a budget alert specifically for a service, such as Compute Engine.

1. Click on Create Budget again.
2. Select Resource-level Budget.
3. Under services, choose all services by default, then filter by typing "Compute" and select Compute Engine.
4. Set your budget amount specifically for Compute Engine usage. For example, set it to 5 US dollars.
5. Click Next. If alert thresholds appear, remove any unnecessary ones (like the 50% threshold) and then click Finish.

This process creates a second budget alert focused on monitoring Compute Engine consumption.

Summary

In this lesson, you learned how to set up two types of billing alerts in GCP:

• Overall Account-Level Alert: Monitors total spending across all services.
• Resource-Level Alert: Focuses on specific services such as Compute Engine.

These billing alerts are crucial for ensuring you remain within your budget and maintain control over your cloud expenditures.

Thank you for following along. You now have the knowledge to manage your GCP costs more efficiently while safeguarding against unexpected charges.