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# Google App Engine Billing FAQ

## Getting started

- Which resources can I purchase additional quota for?
- I'm unable to sign up for a Google Checkout account.
- Why isn't my country listed in the drop-down list on the Set Budget page?
- How do I associate a Google Checkout account with my app for billing?
- If I have enabled billing for one of my applications already, why do I have to do it again for my other apps?
- Am I able to use a normal Google Account to manage a Google Apps-hosted app?
- What is the difference between the maximum daily budget and the Google Checkout authorized charge limit?
- Why is the value shown in Google Checkout different from my maximum daily budget?
- What is a VAT ID and why is it optional?

## Administering

- I would like to switch my billed admin account.
- How do I update my credit card number or other billing information?
- Do I have to re-enable billing after updating my billing information?
- Why do I have to sign a new recurring payment agreement with Google Checkout when I raise my budget?
- Why is my account in a manual review state and what does that mean?
- What happens if I change my maximum daily budget in the middle of the day?

## Managing quotas

- How much free quota does each App Engine app receive?
- What happens to my free quota once I've enabled billing?
- Are billable resources rate-limited?
- How can I track or verify my quota usage?
- Do my datastore indexes consume my billable quota?
- What if I anticipate even more traffic than allowed by the per-minute quotas?
- How will I be charged for partial units?

## Making payments

- How are currency conversions handled?
- Why am I being charged for storing more data than I've actually uploaded?
- My credit card was declined. What happened?
- Why hasn't my payment shown up yet?
- What happens if my credit card is declined or I otherwise can't make my payment?

## Disabling

- How do I disable billing for my application?
- How do I cancel my recurring charge authorization?
- What happens to my balance once I disable billing?
- What happens to my data when I disable billing?

## Other

- What are my options if my application experienced a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?
- I have a question related to billing that isn't addressed here. Where can I get an answer?

## Getting started

#### Which resources can I purchase additional quota for?

When billing is enabled, you can split your budget between five billable resources:

- CPU Time
- Bandwidth in
- Bandwidth out
- Storage
- Email

#### I'm unable to sign up for a Google Checkout account.

Google Checkout's Troubleshooting page provides information to help troubleshoot sign-up issues.

#### Why isn't my country listed in the drop-down list on the Set Budget page?

If your country isn't listed in this drop-down list, Google Checkout is not available in your country and you will not be able to enable billing for your application. If your application requires additional quota, you can submit a request using this form.

#### How do I associate a Google Checkout account with my app for billing?

Sign in to App Engine, select your app and navigate to its Billing Settings page. If you haven't already enabled billing, click the "Enable billing for this Application" link and follow the setup process, including associating your Google Checkout account.

For more details, see Billing.

#### If I have enabled billing for one of my applications already, why do I have to do it again for my other apps?

We want to provide developers with fine-grained control over each of their applications. They may wish to have a separate budget for different apps, or apps that run entirely on free quota, rather than a single budget for each.

#### Am I able to use a Google Account to manage a Google Apps-hosted app?

Yes, any account can manage any application. You can sign into Google App Engine with your Google Apps account by visiting http://appengine.google.com/a/[yourdomain.com].

To learn more about the difference between Google Accounts and Google Apps Accounts, see Google Accounts Help.

#### What is the difference between the maximum daily budget and the Google Checkout authorized charge limit?

When you first enable billing, you are required to authorize a Google Checkout charge limit which represents the maximum amount that you can be charged through Google Checkout for App Engine resources used by this application. After your authorization request is processed, you are free to adjust your maximum daily budget to any value lower than this limit. If you want to set a maximum daily budget that exceeds this limit, you must authorize a new charge limit with Checkout—afterwards, you'll be able to adjust your max daily budget up to this amount.

#### Why is the value shown in Google Checkout different from my maximum daily budget?

In certain countries, a tax is applied to your App Engine charges. Checkout will include the amount of the tax in your authorized charge limit, but it may not be separately itemized on the order receipt.

#### What is a VAT ID and why is it optional?

Value Added Tax (VAT) charges are applied to European Union businesses in addition to the cost of the service. For more information, see the note about VAT guidelines in the Google Apps help center.

## Administering

#### I would like to switch my billed admin account.

Billing administration can be transferred from one Google Account to another through the following steps:

1. Sign in to App Engine using the account you wish to make the billed administrator.
2. Select the account you wish to switch billing for.
3. Access the "Billing Settings" page.
4. Select "Take over as billed administrator."

You will then be guided through confirmation before transferring ownership over to the new administrator.

For more details, see Billing.

#### How do I update my credit card number or other billing information?

If you wish to make changes to the billing information included in your Google Checkout account, refer to the Billing and Shipping FAQ page. To modify your billing settings for a specific App Engine app, sign in to your App Engine account, select your app, and navigate to its Billing Settings page.

#### Do I have to re-enable billing after updating my billing information?

No. Once you update your credit card number, billing address, or other billing information using Google Checkout, App Engine will automatically use this new information for your next statement. You do not need to re-enable billing or cancel your recurring charge authorization first.

#### Why do I have to sign a new recurring payment agreement with Google Checkout when I raise my budget?

The agreement you sign with Google Checkout simply authorizes App Engine to charge your credit card up to a certain amount each week, depending on your app's usage of App Engine. If you want to raise the budget for this app, you'll need to sign a new agreement so that we can charge up to the new, higher amount if your usage requires it.

If, on the other hand, you lower your budget, you don't need to sign a new agreement, because you've already authorized us to charge up to this amount. We'll never charge you more than what you've set as your daily budget.

#### Why is my account in a manual review state and what does that mean?

An account can enter a manual review state for two reasons:

1. The billing administrator disabled billing—while billing is being disabled, your application may remain in this state for up to seven days.
2. An application administrator explicitly requested a manual review of the account.

While an application is in this state, changes cannot be made to any of the billing settings.

#### What happens if I change my maximum daily budget in the middle of the day?

Your application's maximum daily budget is set to the highest budget that you specified during the course of the day (before midnight PST). For example, if you enter $4.00 in the Max Daily Budget field and then adjust it to $2.00 later in the day, you may still be billed up to $4.00 for that day.

## Managing quotas

#### How much free quota does each App Engine app receive?

An application without billing enabled is allocated 500 MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. The Admin Console's Quotas page lists every quota and provides a breakdown of how much your application is consuming per resource.

#### What happens to my free quota once I've enabled billing?

Free quota remains the same once billing is enabled. An app won't be charged until it exceeds its free quota, at which point the billed administrator will be charged based on any such usage up to the maximum daily budget.

For more information on how enabling billing adjusts the free quotas, see Quotas.

#### Are billable resources rate-limited?

Yes—when billing is enabled, each resource is configured individually to allow for about 500 requests per second. You can check the status of each from the Quota Details page in the Admin Console.

For more on these per-minute limits, see Quotas.

#### How can I track or verify my quota usage?

Sign in to the Admin Console and select the application you wish you inspect. Quota usage is located within the "Quota Details" page. Additional usage information may be found on the app's "Usage History" page, linked from the left-hand navigation.

#### Do my datastore indexes consume my billable quota?

Yes, datastore indexes do count against an application's storage quota. The follwing table shows which data is stored for various indexes so you can gauge how much storage your indexes are consuming.

Index type | Number of rows used | Data stored per row
--- | --- | ---
Kind—querying entities by type | One row per entity | Application ID, kind, primary key, small formatting overhead
Property—querying entities using a single property value | One row per property value per entity (excluding db.Blob and db.Text value types). Note that entities with properties of class ListProperty have one row for each value in the list. | Application ID, property name, property value, primary key
Composite—querying entities using multiple property values | One row per unique combination of property values per entity. If properties of class ListProperty are indexed, one row is used for each value in the list. Note that ancestor, if used, is treated as a list property containing the primary keys of the ancestor entities. | Application ID, value1, value2, ... where value* is a unique combination of values of properties in the composite index

#### What if I anticipate even more traffic than allowed by the per-minute quotas?

All applications with billing enabled are able to scale to around 500 requests per second (qps) or more than 40 million queries per day, which is enough to handle traffic from being Slashdotted or Dugg. In extreme cases (e.g. your application has been featured on Yahoo's homepage), you can request additional CPU using this form.

#### How will I be charged for partial units?

Your actual usage of any resource on a given day will be rounded down to the nearest base unit and then rounded up to the nearest cent. The base units for the adjustable quotas are:

- CPU Time: 1 megacycle = 1/1200 CPU second
- Bandwidth in/out: 1 byte
- Storage: 1 byte
- Email: 1 email

For example, if your app transfers 21,582,210,662 bytes over and above the amount allowed by the free quota, this is equivalent to $2.412 (at $0.12 per GB transferred out). The charge for that day would then be $2.42 for this resource.

## Making payments

#### How are currency conversions handled?

Currency conversion is handled by Google Checkout. For additional details regarding currency conversion, refer to the Google Checkout Currency Conversion page.

#### Why am I being charged for storing more data than I've actually uploaded?

The process by which quota consumption is measured is outlined in the documentation page on quotas. As outlined on that page, quota cost may include metadata overhead.

#### My credit card was declined. What happened?

Refer to Google Checkout's Troubleshooting page for additional information regarding why a card may be declined.

#### Why hasn't my payment shown up yet?

It may take up to three days for your payment to register. You can verify your order by signing in to Google Checkout and referring to your Orders listing.

#### What happens if my credit card is declined or I otherwise can't make my payment?

You have up to 30 days after a payment is due to pay your outstanding balance. If payment has not been received after 30 days, all of your quotas will be reverted to the default levels. If payment has not been received after 90 days, we reserve the right to stop serving traffic to your site until any outstanding balance is paid off. To re-enable billing by paying your outstanding balance, follow the instructions on the Billing Settings page.

## Disabling

#### How do I disable billing for my application?

Any application administrator can disable billing by following these steps:

1. Sign in to your App Engine account.
2. Click the name of the application that you want to disable billing for.
3. Navigate to the billing settings page by clicking "Billing Settings" in the left nav.
4. Click "Disable Billing" under "Billing Status."

Note that any application administrator can disable billing but only the billed administrator who authorized weekly charges using Google Checkout can cancel this authorization.

#### How do I cancel my recurring charge authorization?

While any application administrator can disable billing, only the billed administrator who authorized the Google Checkout weekly charge limit can cancel the recurring charge authorization. When billing is enabled, billed administrators will see a checkbox labeled "Cancel Google Checkout Recurring Charge Authorization" underneath the "Disable Billing" button. If this box is checked when billing is disabled, a cancellation request will be logged. It may take up to 7 days to process this request, but you will receive an email notification immediately containing your request and a second notification when the request has been completed. Once the authorization cancellation has been requested, billing cannot be re-enabled for that application until the request is completed.

Note that when you cancel your recurring charge authorization, you will be billed through Checkout for charges accumulated as of the date of your cancellation. You will not be billed for use charges after that date.

#### What happens to my balance once I disable billing?

When you cancel a recurring charge, you will be billed through Checkout for charges accumulated as of the date of your cancellation. You will not be billed for use charges after that date.

#### What happens to my data when I disable billing?

If your app has more data stored than allowed by the free quotas, your application may lose access to that data when you disable billing. Charges for that stored data will continue to accrue until the balance is paid in full.

## Other

#### What are my options if my application experienced a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?

If you believe your application has been the target of a denial of service attack, please contact our support team and include a snippet of your request logs that corroborates this, along with an explanation of why this activity indicates an attack. You may be issued a credit for the service for this period of time.

To access your logs, you can use our log export tool. Note that only the most recent 90 days of requests logs will be available for download, so it's important to file your grievance soon after the incident.

#### I have a question related to billing that isn't addressed here. Where can I get an answer?

If you have a billing issue or question that isn't explicitly answered in the FAQ entries above, please complete the billing issues form and a Google support representative will respond to you shortly.