New Google Maps Platform - How do I set my own usage limits?

Question

In their notifications about the new billing system for the Google Maps APIs, Google very clearly state that you "can set usage limits to protect against unexpected increases". However, I haven't found any documentation regarding how to set these usage limits against an API key. Does anyone know how to do this?

To clarify, I would like to set my own daily usage limits against my API key to prevent it ever going over the free threshold for the static maps API.

Answer 1

OK a bit late for reply, but maybe somebody else can use this.
You do get tons of free map hits etc. If you don't link a pay account, then you are limited to 1 hit per day (that's google maps) which is useless. All other quotas like 10000 per 100 sec etc are secondary to the 1 hit per day.

Now once you have linked your pay account or a Credit Card etc, to google development console then you get full quota for free user, plus more if you go over your quota covered by your Credit Card.

However don't panic, for first year it's all free and you get $300 (at this moment) worth of free stuff.

Even if you go over this limit Google will first ask you if you wish to change to payment system or continue with free. If you decide to pay then you will be charged per indicated on google dev site. If you decide to go with free option then the service to your site will stop until next rotation, i.e. day or month etc depending on service.

see this table.

Unless you have millions of hit on your map page or app, then the free quota is more than enough for normal sites.

Here is a price calculator by google.

As you see you get a lot of unlimited stuff and some paid if you go over your recurring credit of $200 or $300

Google makes it so complicated because it involves people coming from old system and those registering between roll over etc.

perhaps this will help too.

You can also set budgets and alerts just in case you go over budget (via Billing section of dev site)

So in short :) you get tons of free and if you have a lot of visitors the surely you make some money to pay for the services.

Note that google charges for all their API services in 1 place so if you use say Geocoding and firebase and cloud dev etc then you will soon start paying.

Sorry for any typos, I did this fast.