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Expensive cloud tutorials

Beware when trying out cloud tutorials! It may cost you more than you expect if you're not paying attention.

Step 1 - Follow a tutorial like Quickstart for Node.js in the App Engine Flexible Environment to deploy a simple, Hello World-like application to Google App Engine.

Step 2 - Let it sit unused for 28 days.

Step 3 - Profit!

Not for me, for Google. They billed me for $35.40 for 40,384 minutes of "Flex Instance Core Hours" even though there was no traffic on the site. I have another toy App Engine instance that's been up for like a year with more occasional traffic and I don't think it's generated any cost yet.

I had played around with adding Passport auth to the tutorial app and storing session information to Cloud SQL, so that added another $20 or so.

Do all cloud tutorials end up being this expensive?

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