# Accident Forgiveness

DevFeed: [Accident Forgiveness](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/accident-forgiveness-1687.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://fly.io/blog/accident-forgiveness/>)

Published: 2024-08-21T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [The Fly Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-fly-blog.md>)

Topics: [fly.io](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/fly-io.md>), [Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud.md>), [hosting](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hosting.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/configuration.md>), [CI/CD](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cicd.md>), [networking](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/networking.md>)

Tags: [cdn](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cdn.md>), [ci-cd](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ci-cd.md>), [close-to-users](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/close-to-users.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/configuration.md>), [deploy-app-servers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/deploy-app-servers.md>), [docker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/docker.md>), [elixir](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/elixir.md>), [fly](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/fly.md>), [fly-io](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/fly-io.md>), [heroku-alternative](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/heroku-alternative.md>), [heroku-competitor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/heroku-competitor.md>), [hosting](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hosting.md>), [i](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/i.md>), [networking](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/networking.md>), [postgresql-clusters](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgresql-clusters.md>), [servers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/servers.md>)

## AI overview

Fly.io discusses the financial anxiety of elastic public-cloud resources, where configuration mistakes, unintended virtual machines, or leaked CI/CD environments can produce unexpectedly large bills. The article argues that cloud providers often have billing-support processes that may forgive disputed charges, while suggesting that cloud billing still needs improvement.

## Source excerpt

We're Fly.io, a new public cloud with simple, developer-friendly ergonomics. Try it out; you'll be deployed in just minutes, and, as you're about to read, with less financial risk. Public cloud billing is terrifying. The premise of a public cloud -- what sets it apart from a hosting provider -- is 8,760 hours/year of on-tap deployable compute, storage, and networking. Cloud resources are "elastic": they're acquired and released as needed; in the "cloud-iest" apps, without human intervention. Public cloud resources behave like utilities, and that's how they're priced. You probably can't tell me how much electricity your home is using right now, and may only come within tens of dollars of accurately predicting your water bill. But neither of those bills are all that scary, because you assume there's a limit to how much you could run them up in a single billing interval. That's not true of public clouds. There are only so many ways to "spend" water at your home, but there are indeterminably many ways to land on a code path that grabs another VM, or to miskey a configuration, or to leak long-running CI/CD environments every time a PR gets merged. Pick a practitioner at random, and I bet they've read a story within the last couple months about someone running up a galactic-scale bill at some provider or other. Implied Accident Forgiveness For people who don't do a lot of cloud work, what all this means is that every PR push sets off a little alarm in the back of their heads: "you may have just incurred $200,000 of costs!". The alarm is quickly silenced, though it's still subtly extracting a cortisol penalty. But by deadening the nerves that sense the danger of unexpected charges, those people are nudged closer to themselves being the next story on Twitter about an accidental $200,000 bill. The saving grace here, which you'll learn if you ever become that $200,000 story, is that nobody pays those bills. See, what cloud-savvy people know already is that providers have billin