I usually pay around $140 to keep my game here on playfab but this month I just got a bill of $2,400+, it doesn't make any sense, it's the second time already I get surprised with a bill way out of my spectations, where is the page to monitor these charges?
That's correct - as we announced back in April of last year, we moved to a consumption-based model. At the time, we gave everyone six months (until October 1st) in order to make any changes they needed to their titles, in order to make any optimizations they would like to. (Level Up with Azure PlayFab). Later, we added a month to that, making it seven months in total (Usage-based Pricing Update: Transition Period extended through October 31, 2020 (playfab.com)).
And it looks like we failed to bill you in December for your November usage, which is why you didn't receive an invoice last month. I'm not sure why that is, and I'll check on that, but we won't be going back and billing you for that month, so don't worry about that.
The tools to monitor your title's costs are primarily the Billing Summary page (Billing Summary + Base Rate - PlayFab | Microsoft Docs), which gives you a month-by-month estimate on usage and costs (note: that's not a bill, nor is it meant to be read as one - it's just an estimate that gives totals based on your current tier). You can download a CSV of the daily usage for all the meters from it, and combined with the Daily API Usage Details report, that gives you an easy way to spot where your costs are coming from, and so effectively optimize (we'd also recommend reading our best practices guide: PlayFab Consumption Best Practices - PlayFab | Microsoft Docs).
One thing I can recommend is that really should choose the Standard tier. Since you were in the free tier previously, the system couldn't automatically move you to a tier with a monthly base fee, since you hadn't agreed to one. But the Standard tier has around $800 of included meters, and looking at your usage totals, it would bring your total billing for December's usage down to around $2,000. If you want to make that change now, I can work with the billing team to re-do your January invoice (for December's usage) in that tier.
I never paid much attention to this change because I would never have expected a rise of 1,700% in my bill, my game consume the same as always did.
If changing to standard plan helps I will want that of course, and yes, I would appreciate if you made this change for me.
Also, I am not sure ho to pay for the current bill, I don't even have a credit card with enough limit.
That's why we tried to provide as many details as we could on how the new pricing works, when we announced it - so that folks would be able to review their usage and understand where they might want to make changes ahead of the move. Previously, the billing wasn't based on actual consumption of the service - it was just based on MAU. So, heavy usage of API calls (which can be bad for the player, particularly if they have to pay for Internet usage per MB, but also it drains batteries faster on mobile titles) wasn't reflected in the billing.
Please go ahead and use the Contact Us form (Contact us (playfab.com)) to instruct us to move your account to the Standard tier. I'll keep an eye out for it, and get the billing team to get your account changed and the January invoice recomputed.
For how to pay, I can have the accounting team work with you on that, to see what we can work out.
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