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I have a Google App Engine app which is used by a small amount of users of a certain niche website. The app's only function is to get data about the user from that website's API, use that data to produce a CSS file, and deliver that CSS to the user. There are a few apps (made by others) like mine for this website; mine is the newest, so my amount of traffic is small compared to the others'.

However, one of the other apps (which served a large portion of the available users) just crashed due to it exceeding its GAE quotas. As a result, a large amount of users are starting to migrate to my service. Since the service is by nature not practically monetizable, I'd like to be able to continue my service without enabling billing on GAE.

My question is this: The only quota that I am likely to exceed using the free limits is the bandwidth quota (specifically incoming, due to the API calls). Would it be feasible to create a new free GAE app just like the first and have the first one redirect to the second one when the first one runs out of bandwidth? What obstacles would I run into using this approach? Are there any better solutions?

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First, such use violates the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service:

3.3 Restrictions. Customer will not, and will not allow third parties under its control to: ... (d) create multiple Applications, Accounts, or Projects to simulate or act as a single Application, Account, or Project (respectively) or otherwise access the Services in a manner intended to avoid incurring Fees;...

Second, once the 1st app would hit a daily quota it would stop working, so it would not be technically able to respond to incoming requests with a redirection. From When a resource is depleted:

When an application consumes all of an allocated resource, the resource becomes unavailable until the quota is replenished. This may mean that your application will not work until the quota is replenished.

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  • Oh wow, I feel stupid now. Thanks for pointing out the TOS.
    – Noah
    Jan 6, 2017 at 7:44
  • There is however an over-quota error handler which can be used to make custom responses. I was assuming that a redirect could be achieved using that
    – Noah
    Jan 6, 2017 at 7:48
  • Ah, you mean the static page mapped to the over_quota status code could contain a link to the the standby app - yes, that's true. But the reply would still contain the over_quota status code, not a redirect one.
    – Dan Cornilescu
    Jan 6, 2017 at 13:21

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