Google OAuth App Verification Cost for Personal App

[mino-n]

Hello, 

I'm fairly new to the google api ecosystem. I'm trying to create an app that simply sends me an email (to my personal account) once a day with links from arxiv.org for relevant research papers. I'm using the arxiv api and not really doing anything complex. I saw that to send emails, I need to be verified for OAuth App Verification. I read online that this MIGHT cost $15k-70k. I am not a corporation, nor am I willing to spend that much on a simple project. 

My question is, is this true ? All I really want to do is add an "auth/gmail.send" scope to my project. Any information on this would be helpful. Thank you!

[Joy_S]

Hi @mino-n,

Welcome to Google Cloud Community!

To answer your question, the $15k-$70k fee for verification usually applies to apps that need a formal review because they’ll be used by a lot of people. But for a personal project like yours, where you’re just sending yourself an email with research links, you don’t need to go through the verification process.  As long as you're using the app solely for yourself (or with a small test group), you can use the Gmail API in testing mode without requiring verification. This allows you to use the auth/gmail.send scope for sending emails. You can keep working on your app without stressing about the fees for now. If you decide to expand it later and make it available to more people, you can look into the OAuth verification process then.

For now, I'd suggest starting with the steps to create a Gmail API client and testing it with your personal account.

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