[gm]

Set up a budget. At least Azure has those, and you can set whatever limit you want. If you hit the limit, the access will be cut off (and VMs shut down, etc). Your data will not be lost, though. When the new billing period rolls around, all will be back to normal.

I highly recommend something like this if you want to learn the cloud and do not have an employer to sponsor an account for you.

All these suggestions of using a throw-away CC number to avoid paying the bill are just unethical, IMO. No need to resort to those measures.

[ficklepickle]

Be careful with that. On AWS, at least, you can get a massive bill before the limits kick in.

There have been horror stories posted here before.