Diagnose: billing account is not open / billingNotEnabled

TL;DR: Billing errors (GCS 403 Account Disabled, BigQuery billingNotEnabled) mean no open billing account on the project. Confirm with gcloud billing projects describe, link an account, and check free-tier exhaustion on old projects. Never linked, or the linked account was closed. Confirm: 1. gcloud billing projects describe [P] - shows billingEnabled false or no account.

The fix

1. gcloud billing projects describe [P] - shows billingEnabled false or no account.
2. In the console, Billing for the project shows no linked account or a closed one.
3. If it worked before and broke now: check whether the billing account was closed or the free-tier allowance ran out. "Worked yesterday" points at the account, not the project. Fix: Then rerun. No code or IAM changes needed. After fixing, do the cost hygiene you skipped:
4. Create a budget with alert thresholds on the billing account before running anything expensive.
5. For BigQuery, dry-run big queries first (check totalbytesprocessed).
6. For GCS, remember storage, operations, and egress all bill; lifecycle policies cut storage cost. Agent trap: provisioning scripts that create the project but never link billing, then fail at the first real resource. Link billing in the same script, right after project creation, and assert billingEnabled before proceeding. Verify: describe shows billingEnabled true, then the original operation succeeds.

When to use this

• This covers exactly what the title says: Diagnose.
• You are setting this up for the first time, or auditing an existing setup.
• You want the key gotchas in one place before you start.

When not to use this

• You are doing a different workflow with Diagnose; these steps are specific to the title above.
• You need the full reference docs; this is the short path, not the manual.

Compatibility

• Not pinned to a specific version; follows current Diagnose behavior.

Verified 2026-09-26: GCS troubleshooting documents 403 Account Disabled as billing-not-enabled; BigQuery error docs document billingNotEnabled 403. Both point at linking a billing account as the fix.