Billing
The billing method is pre-paid, you need to 'top-up' your account to use TagLinker.
The billing is split in two parts:
1. TagLinker usage
TagLinker usage is very simple :
- 1¢ to view an interactive web document (viewer)
- 1¢ to search and view an interactive web document (search)
- 3¢ to update an interactive web document (editor)
- 5¢ to index a sheet of your spreadsheet (indexer)
- 10¢ to link a document (linker)
All the other actions are free:
- Using the toolbar with the viewer
- Deleting a sheet with the indexer
- Deleting an interactive web document with the ???
- Searching
- Users management
- Settings
- Etc..
2. Google usage
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) host TagLinker on the cloud. GCP provide a virtual CPU (vCPU) and memory to run instances of TagLinker. GCP provide also other ressources for TagLinker. We use also Google Firebase which is a part of GCP for some ressources explained below.
Google will bill us monthly for this usage and we will bill you accordingly. Google offers a generous free-tier for the GCP ressources, one of the cheapest on the market therefore, for a normal usage, the cost shall be very low.
Below, we give you a list of all the ressources TagLinker use and their costs. Please go to the GCP free tier web page to get the latest free tier values for all the ressources used. The values below maybe old and not represent the current values up to date.
1. Authentification
We use Firebase Authentification (FA) for access control of TagLinker, this ressource provide an excellent protection against hackers on the cloud. Indeed, you need a valid idToken and an access level to access TagLinker. The Firebase Authentification (FA) is free.
2. Database
We use Firebase Firestore (FF) to store your credentials and tags database use by our software modules. Google bill for the storage and CRUD operations (Create, Read,Update, Delete).
The free tier covers (see Google for any updates) :
- 1 GB Storage
- 50,000 reads / day
- 20,000 writes / day
- 20,000 deletes / day
If you exceed those amount (shall be very rare), you get billed:
- Storage ≈ $0.026/GB/month
- Reads ≈ $0.06 per 100,000 reads
- Writes ≈ $0.18 per 100,000 writes
Basically the database usage is free.
3. OCR
We use Google Vision (GV) Optical Character Recongnition (OCR) to scan your document image and extract the tags from it. GV is one of the most advance OCR on the market and its pretty cheap too.
The free tier covers 1,000 document / month. You get billed ≈ $1.50 per 1,000 documents if you exceed the free tier.
4. Artifact Registry
Taglinker is a docker image having a size of around 1 GB. This image need to be hosted on the cloud somewhere, Artifact Registry (AR) will host this image on the cloud. Google free tier offer .5 GB for free and charge ≈ $0.1/GB/month. So the monthly fee will be around 50¢ per month to host TagLinker image.
5. Cloud Run
Cloud Run (CR) is the service running TagLinker, CR is compose of virtual CPU (vCPU) and memory (MEM). The monthly free tier offer the following:
- CPU : 180,000 vCPU-seconds
- MEM : 360,000 GB-seconds
- Requests : 2 million
- Network egress : 1 GB outside GCP
Requests are any HTTP requests to TagLinker, Network egress is any HTTP response to the user. If you exceed the Network egress free tier, you will get billed ~$0.12 per GB. TagLinker response is mainly sending HTML code back to the user and cached shared libraries on your browser which make a very light HTTP payload therefore, it would be surprising if you exceed the free tier amount. If you exeed 1 GB, you get billed ~$0.12 per GB which is very cheap.
Example
Linking a document with your tags is the most extensive processing load, TagLinker will takes ≈30 sec. to link a document average.
For your project, if you have 10,000 documents to link during the month :
CPU usage
| Description | Qte |
|---|---|
| Job duration | 30 |
| Job | 10,000 |
| Total jobs-seconds | 300000 |
| Free tier | 360000 |
| Billed jobs-seconds | -60000 |
| $0.000024 per vCPU-second | -$1.44 |
Memory usage
| Description | Qte |
|---|---|
| Job duration | 30 |
| Total GB-seconds | 300000 |
| Free tier | 180000 |
| Billed GB-seconds | 120000 |
| $0.0000025 per GiB-second | $0.3 |
As you can see the usage of Cloud RUN even for 10,000 documents per month is almost free.
6. Other Services
TagLinker use a lot of different GCP services, most of them won't be billed and are covered by the freee-tier. Some matbe billed like logging, Big Query, Cloud Storage, etc.. But the monthly cost shall be minimum, expect less than $1 per month.
Summary
Let's say you have a project of 5,000 documents and 25 sheets in your spreadsheets. Your team will edit and update 1,000 interactive web documents and view 5,000 of them during the month.
| Description | Qte | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Sheets | 25 | |
| Documents | 5,000 | |
| Indexer | 25 | $1.25 |
| Linker | 5,000 | $500 |
| Editor | 1,000 | $30 |
| Viewer | 5,000 | $50 |
| Google GCP | $1 | |
| TOTAL | $582.25 |
Considering that you shall use the linker, indexer and editor only once or a few time compare to the viewer, and its takes 5-10 seconds to view a tag information compare to more than 30 seconds using the usual way and your employees hourly salary, this cost will be amortize pretty fast.