Ever Had a Runaway API Bill? What Happened?

I had a rough experience too—spent $2k on Sanity in just 5 days for hosting videos without proper caching. They charged me the full amount too, which hurt a lot.

Our team had a big surprise when a teammate accidentally looped requests to our own API—we ended up with a $3k bill from AWS. Their response was just a generic 'sorry that sucks' email and a 10% credit. A proxy with a global kill switch would have saved us, and honestly, it’s also about ensuring the right practices and not having folks testing production.

Yep, I learned this the hard way when I left a script running against an AI API over a weekend. Ended up with a few hundred bucks in charges before I caught it. The provider waived part of the bill, but it still stung. Now, I set usage caps and alerts at low thresholds and use separate dev keys. Having a central proxy and a kill switch would definitely help prevent these mistakes for many people.

I once forgot to restrict the Places API to our domain. It ran fine for 3-4 years without issues until I was hit with a $1200 bill after our accountant asked about it. That's why we’ve changed our approach to deploying sites with our internal APIs.

I recommend setting billing alerts and hard caps on all APIs. Most providers allow you to set these up now. It’s not a matter of 'if' it happens, but 'when,' especially with AI APIs that can rack up costs quickly if there’s a runaway process.