After adding a lot of extra tiles over the last couple of days to my Hexham to Morpeth route, for the first time ever I’ve had an email to say I will incur an actual charge for the use of the Static Maps API. Shock Horror! I only started using the overlay set to High Definition rather than Normal in the past two days so I’m not really sure if that was the cause, or simply the increase in size of the area I’m working with now. Of course it’s unlikely to break the bank but I’d rather avoid being charged if possible. I wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience and could offer any advice.
The Editor can cache the map tiles on your PC so it won't need to download them each time you use it. So this should be a one-time thing after you've changed the resolution probably. You should probably double-check in the Editor Settings whether or not you have this caching function actually activated though.
Was finally billed at around £16 for last months usage. I always understood that the free allowance was unlikely to be exceeded but may have to be more careful in future. Not even certain if I still qualify for the free quota.
I had the same happen to me a few months ago when I was checking the track layout. Solution is to only work on one area at a time.
Just keep an eye on the number that appears when loading a section. 10K is the limit for the month, after that you get charged.
In Google console you can set an limit for your usage and/or enable a warning email before you exceed the limit. Google Maps Platform->Metrics->Maps Static API (Create usage allert and then set up a notification channel) Not long ago Google did lower the free quota. Higher resolution= more google "tiles" are loaded. 640x640 = ~2 quote, 1280x1280= ~4 quote. But how many that are loaded at once depends on the tile size in UE.
