Cloudflare bill shock cases
Browse first-hand reports of unexpected Cloudflare bills, with reported causes and follow-ups.
Total reported amount
$36,653.37
Source-linked reports: Amounts and outcomes come from the original reports and linked replies.
21 cases
shmily7: a Durable Object alarm loop and a reported $10,000 bill.
@shmily7 reports a roughly $10,000 bill from a Durable Object alarm loop in an unused test project and later says a requested reduction was refused.
Reported amount · USD
$10,000
A simulation game, a reported $4,483.74 in Durable Object reads.
Jonathan Mann (@songadaymann) reports spending $4,483.74 on Durable Object reads while building a simulation game. Rita Kozlov replies, “let us see what we can do”; Mann later thanks her.
Reported amount · USD
$4,483.74
mcwangcn reports past D1 write charges of “over a thousand dollars.”
@mcwangcn says D1 writes previously cost over a thousand dollars and separately mentions Workers CPU charges without giving an amount.
Reported amount · USD
Not disclosed
D1 status writes: an author reports a 150-dollar charge and refund.
@wofuhuola describes a generated tool writing Reddit post statuses globally every five minutes and deleting expired rows. The author says one month cost 150 dollars, went unnoticed for three months, and was later refunded after an appeal.
Reported amount · USD
$150
per month
Sitemap polling: the author reports a $100 Cloudflare bill alongside AWS costs.
@enzyme_dev says a refactor made Workers fetch a sitemap every five seconds. In an October 6 reply, he reports a $100 Cloudflare bill and an AWS bill above $800 for the previous week.
Reported amount · USD
$100
A voting page polling every three seconds: the author revises a $1,000 report.
@keking99 first reports about $1,000 for a voting page polling /api/result every three seconds. A later post reports $816.52 in accumulated usage as of October 4 and cites another screenshot total of $817.14.
Reported amount · USD
$816.52
A 12 MB D1 database, a reported USD 1,966.35 invoice.
@imselmon reports a USD $1,966.35 D1 invoice for a roughly 12 MB database with over two billion row writes. The author says the activity is abnormal and is investigating the database usage.
Reported amount · USD
$1,966.35
D1 row reads: an author reports a $108 bill in seven days.
@shivek_khurana reports a $108 Cloudflare D1 bill over seven days after a workflow read more rows than needed. The author says adding an index reduced reads by about 90%.
Reported amount · USD
$108
D1 migration: the author reports a $911.56 charge after stopping the job.
@m0xandrew says a hobby-project D1 migration reached 8,274% of a budget alert, so he stopped it and requested a one-time waiver. He later reports a $911.56 charge, closure of the old case and opening a new support case.
Reported amount · USD
$911.56
A development app, a reported $655.83 Durable Object alarm bill.
@q_huy_ngo reports a $655.83 bill and roughly 700 million interactions from a faulty alarm in an app with no users. CloudflareHelp says it will review the support case and reply in the ticket.
Reported amount · USD
$655.83
Standard Agents: two loops, a reported $8,846 bill.
Justin Schroeder and Boyd describe the same Standard Agents incident: two Durable Objects ran unbounded loops. Justin reports an $8,846 bill and a later bill adjustment.
Reported amount · USD
$8,846
Durable Objects: a hackathon evaluation program leads to a billing complaint.
@nukonuko reports an unexpectedly large Cloudflare invoice, stops the suspected Durable Objects usage and asks support for a refund. Later posts link the incident to a hackathon evaluation program and say income will go toward the bill.
Reported amount · USD
Not disclosed
D1: an author reports a $3,500 bill in 48 hours and a full waiver.
@darylginn reports about $3,500 in D1 charges over 48 hours. He says an AI-assisted Postgres migration omitted indexes and caused about 970 billion row reads daily, and that Cloudflare waived the bill.
Reported amount · USD
$3,500
Jason Silberman: an approximately $1,000 AI-billing dispute, later reported resolved.
@_jasonsilberman reports an invoice around $1,000 with AI usage rows he says were duplicated and already prepaid. Cloudflare personnel reply, including Matthew Prince, who says the case was escalated. The author later says the issue was resolved.
Reported amount · USD
$1,000
MXGA: a reported $209.37 bill after a D1 query bug.
@luoleiorg describes a D1 query bug that raised usage roughly 1,400-fold. An initial $200-plus report becomes $209.37 in a later post; the author says Cloudflare waived the previous month’s entire invoice after a support request.
Reported amount · USD
$209.37
Will Moss: a reported 20 trillion Durable Object reads from an alarm loop.
@itswillmoss reports 20,213,871,155,804 Durable Object reads, a dashboard mismatch and lost project access. He attributes the loop to health checks waking onStart and repeatedly setting an alarm. The X thread estimates the cost above $30,000.
Reported amount · USD
Not disclosed
levelsio: disputed Smart Shield Argo charges of about $1,500/month.
Pieter Levels says around 200 sites were charged for Smart Shield Argo although he had not enabled it. He reports about $1,500 per month and later says Cloudflare refunded everything.
Reported amount · USD
$1,500
per month
moltworker: a reported $81 monthly bill, not the expected $5.
Ahmet Alp Balkan (@ahmetb) reports an $81 monthly bill after running moltworker, compared with a $5/month expectation from the repository. Mike Nomitch identifies himself as the Containers PM and invites Ahmet to DM with details.
Reported amount · USD
$81
per month
Workers and Queues: an author reports a jump from $5 to $2,145.
@goteap reports that a code loop generated over two billion internal requests and raised an invoice from $5 to $2,145. The author says a refund was not possible.
Reported amount · USD
$2,145
Browser Rendering: an $80 report and a later correction about usage.
@loftwah initially says Browser Rendering charged $80 for services he never used, then clarifies that he had not realized he was using them. A later post says the billing issue remained unresolved.
Reported amount · USD
$80
R2 replication frequency: an author reports a bill close to $100.
@lucianghinda links a bill close to $100 and over 20 million R2 Class A operations to Litestream setups without a replication interval.
Reported amount · USD
$100
Independent. Unofficial. Source-first.