Unexpected Build CPU charges without advance spending alerts

Hi Vercel team and community,

I’m writing to share feedback about an experience that caught me completely off guard: I received USD 401.05 in unexpected Build CPU charges across two recent invoices.

For context, these were my monthly Build CPU charges before credits:

May 2026: USD 0.58
June 2026: USD 28.66
July 2026: USD 1.93
August 2026: USD 8.19
September 2026: USD 402.18 total

The September total includes USD 1.13 on the regular monthly invoice and USD 401.05 on two additional receipts later that month.

What happened

I received two receipts containing the following Build CPU charges:

USD 100.22 on the first receipt
USD 300.83 on the second receipt

Including applicable tax, the total amount charged was USD 441.34.

The first receipt, received on September 22, showed USD 100.22 in Build CPU charges. Five days later, on September 27, I received a second receipt showing an additional USD 300.83 in Build CPU charges.

These emails were receipts issued after the charges had already been incurred. They were not advance spending alerts that gave me an opportunity to prevent the charges.

I did not receive an advance Spend, Usage, Budget, Threshold, or unusual-usage email alert before the charges accumulated. In particular, I did not receive an advance email warning between the first receipt and the additional USD 300.83 charge five days later.

By the time I became aware of the full extent of the issue, the total Build CPU charges had reached USD 401.05. This level of Build CPU usage was never intended.

Why this is a problem

No advance spending alert: The emails I received were receipts issued after the charges had already been incurred, not warnings that gave me an opportunity to prevent them.
No warning about the rapid increase: I did not receive an advance email alert warning me that Build CPU charges were rapidly accumulating.
No warning between the two charges: After receiving the first receipt for USD 100.22, I did not receive an advance email alert before an additional USD 300.83 in Build CPU charges accumulated over the following five days.
Difficult to request a manual review: When I contacted Support to request a refund or account credit, I was told that the amount exceeded the automatic refund limit. I was also told that Support could not override the limit or open a case for manual refund review.

Feedback for Vercel

A receipt issued after a charge has already been incurred should not be the first indication that Build CPU usage is increasing unexpectedly.
Customers should receive a prominent advance warning before Build CPU charges accumulate to hundreds of dollars.
Vercel should send an unusual-usage alert when Build CPU consumption increases sharply within a short period.
When a request exceeds the automatic refund limit, customers should still have a clear path to request a manual review by a Billing specialist.

This was unintended usage, and I was not given a timely advance warning that would have allowed me to stop the charges before they reached USD 401.05.

The automatic refund system also appears to have rejected my request solely because of the amount, rather than after a manual review of the circumstances.

Could someone from the Vercel team please help get this request in front of a Billing specialist for a manual review?

I can provide the relevant billing details privately if needed.

I hope sharing this feedback helps improve Vercel’s billing alerts and refund review process for other customers. Has anyone else experienced something similar?

First, I want to make sure you're getting the help you need. Do you have a support ticket yet? If not, you can open one at vercel.com/help

Appreciate you sharing feedback about your experience. It sounds like there's still some room for improvement here, but I just want to clarify a couple of things to help it make more sense

These emails were receipts issued after the charges had already been incurred. They were not advance spending alerts that gave me an opportunity to prevent the charges.

Receiving a partial invoice earlier than your normal billing cycle is actually part of the early warning system to help you avoid runaway usage. There's not really a way to predict the future and warn before usage is incurred, so the next best thing is to let people know when a usage pattern has gotten unusual before a metric gets wildly high.

The system recognizes the unusual usage pattern and sends a notification with an invoice for only the amount that's already been used. At that point, you can change build machine settings, manually pause projects, or do whatever is needed to keep usage in budget.

I did not receive an advance Spend, Usage, Budget, Threshold, or unusual-usage email alert before the charges accumulated. In particular, I did not receive an advance email warning between the first receipt and the additional USD 300.83 charge five days later.

You should definitely have received an alert 50%, 75%, and 100% of your set budget ($200 by default) unless you've disabled notifications, so I'm going to flag this with the team to figure out what went wrong. A bug in the alert system would be a high priority issue. If you let me know your case number, I can make sure the engineering team knows about it.

CleanShot 2026-10-08 at 4.32.18 PM.png