Cloud Functions for Firebase - Billing account not configured
I just implemented the new Cloud Functions for Firebase, but there something in the log that bothers me:
Billing account not configured. External network is not accessible and quotas are severily limited. Configure billing account to remove these restrictions
I actually managed to access the function from the external network, so I'm wondering do I really have to give my billing account? There's nothing about this in the firebase documentation.
I'm using the Spark subscription plan for personal test purposes and I don't want to add billing info if I'm not going to pay for anything yet.
Answer
The "Billing account not configured" warning message is automatically logged by Google Cloud Functions when no billing account is configured. It doesn't mean that your code isn't working, but it merely there as a reminder just in case you have a problem.
The restriction is about outbound access - e.g. can your Function request resources from the general internet. Its absolutely fine to use a function to respond to a webhook, or to access Google-internal services such a the Realtime Database.
If you wanted to call a third party web service (for example) you'd need to enable billing.
For the other quotas, take a look at: https://firebase.google.com/pricing/ - as you can see there are limits to the number of invocations (125,000 at time of writing) and CPU and memory (40k cpu-seconds and 40k GB-seconds) in the free tier.