They have transfer limits and an associated overage fee iirc. I can still see this sort of thing happening if that is the case.

My understanding is you hit your bandwidth cap and that's it, no more bandwidth.

(edit) looks like that's not the case, I'm sure I used to have to buy a second instance a few years ago if I did want to use more bandwidth that was allocated

I barely even realized that, since my hobby stuff doesn't come anywhere near the limit.

For those curious, the overage rate is $10/TB ($0.01/GB) after the transfer included in the plan.

The smallest amount of included transfer is 1TB for the $5/mo VPS.

Or just go with Hetzner and have a limit 20X as big with cheaper prices

https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

Personally I like Mythic Beasts and use their raspberry pi servers and VPSes. Much less terrifying pricing and the support is good too.

Yes, their support is amazing. I can email the support address and have a real human who knows what he/she is doing reply within minutes or hours at most.

Exactly! It is quite refreshing to not have to battle past first line to find someone with the understanding to help. No shibboleth required. Cheaper hosting, too.

Not really as there is network traffic quota:

If you use up your monthly network transfer pool, you can continue to use your Linodes normally. That being said, you will be charged $0.01 for each additional GB at the end of your billing cycle.

Sure that's what i am doing. A beefy dedicated machine with no bandwidth pricing. But that also means i need to do everything by my own. I don't get any of the worry-free services of AWS.

Like the $10k/day bills? Odd definition of 'worry free'

I worry far less about my Netcup servers + BunnyCDN than I ever did about my AWS bills.

How is surprise billing not a worry?

Or hetzner, or Vultr.