Emergency: I just got a huge bill

General steps, last reviewed Oct 14, 2026. Not legal or financial advice.

What should I do first?

1. Stop the bleeding. Turn on the provider's pause/cap if one exists (see the table), e.g. Vercel's Pause Production Deployments or an OpenAI hard spend limit. On Google Cloud, disabling billing stops services but Google warns resources might be irretrievably deleted.
2. Rotate or delete leaked keys. AWS and Google Cloud both document deleting unneeded/compromised keys and creating new ones. Restrict API keys (Google Cloud best practice).
3. Find the source. Check usage pages by project, key and SKU before deleting anything you may need as evidence.
4. Contact support quickly through the official billing support channel (e.g. open an AWS Support case). Explain the timeline and what you did. Refunds or credits are at the provider's discretion; nothing here promises one.
5. Add caps and alerts before you restart traffic.

Official sources

• AWS: Manage access keys (delete/rotate)
• AWS Support: create a case
• Google Cloud: API key best practices
• Google Cloud: Disable billing with notifications
• Vercel Spend Management (pause projects)
• OpenAI Spend limits