Solana developers billed $5K for single query via Google Cloud's BigQuery

Blockchain developers are dropping horror stories about insane bills from Google Cloud's BigQuery—like one developer who got slapped with a $15K charge for just three queries. BigQuery is Google's serverless data warehouse for analyzing massive datasets with SQL and built-in AI, but it's turning into a financial nightmare for the crypto crowd.

That's from a pseudonymous developer, shared by Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of Trading Strategy. The developer's usual bill was a few hundred bucks, but this month it skyrocketed to $18K. After complaining to Google support, they knocked it down to $4K per query—still brutal.

Other crypto professionals are calling out predatory pricing, noting you can't set hard stops on spending. Ermin Nurovic, co-founder of Flat Money, chimed in: “They intentionally don't let you set hard stops. Your Google Cloud function got stuck in a recursive loop costing you thousands? Too bad.”

Solana integrated with BigQuery in October 2023, letting users query blockchain data like whale transactions or NFT sales. But this billing chaos is making developers rethink everything.

Another anonymous developer got hit with a $5K bill for one query on a Solana table that accidentally scanned multiple terabytes. Luckily, their company had local Google connections and got a refund. Now, they never query without checking partitions first.

This pricing model is so wild that relying on BigQuery for AI algorithms seems impossible. Developers are on high alert, and the crypto community is buzzing with warnings.