Google Cloud Pricing: The Complete Guide

As digital transformation continues to reshape the modern business landscape, many organizations are transitioning towards cloud hosting services for their technological needs. Dynamic platforms like Google Cloud help to reduce physical IT infrastructure while providing flexibility, scalability, and ample storage. 

But Google Cloud isn’t just one product available to purchase at a flat rate. There are many products and services under the Google Cloud umbrella, and each have their own unique pricing models. 

If you’re curious about Google Cloud pricing, follow this guide to learn which option is best for you. 

How Does GCP Pricing Work?

Functionality and features are hugely important when considering your cloud solutions, but if you’re in the process of cloud migration, cost is sure to be one of your biggest concerns.

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers a robust suite of cloud services for business organizations of all sizes and also provides a selection of price estimates to help you calculate your approximate expenses.

The sheer number of different price points for different cloud services can seem overwhelming at first glance. There are not only different products to consider, but different pricing models as well.

The good news is that once you take a closer look at the various Google Cloud Platform products and their pricing models, it’s much easier to understand how GCP pricing works.

What Are the Google Cloud Pricing Models?

When it comes to Google Cloud pricing, there are three main models to choose from. Each have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages, and the right pricing plan for you will depend on the immediate technological needs of your business and your future digital transformation goals.

Pay-as-You-Go Pricing

Google Cloud is unique in that it leverages a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, meaning you only pay for the services you use. There's no up-front fees or termination charges; Pricing varies by product and usage.

Click here to view a detailed price list.

Free Tier Option

If you’re still testing the waters of cloud technology and aren’t sure if you’re ready to commit to purchasing Google Cloud services, you can always try a free tier option for a variety of Google products. At the free tier, you can enjoy free usage of Google Cloud Platform resources up to a specific limit.

How Are Google Cloud Products Priced? 

Google Cloud Compute Pricing

Google Compute Engine gives you the power to develop and run virtual machines (VMs) on Google’s infrastructure. Google charges for actual use rather than a bulk fee applied every billing period.

However, Google also offers a sustained use discount when customers use an instance for a sufficient amount of time. Compute Engine provides a discount of 20 to 30% for every minute you use an instance if the usage exceeds 25% per month. 

Google Cloud Storage Pricing

Google Cloud Storage is a premier enterprise storage service that can stash large unstructured data sets. Different amounts of storage space with different storage classes can be purchased for protecting sensitive data and everyday resources alike. 

Cost for Google Cloud Storage is based on:

• Data Storage: The amount of data retained in your buckets. Storage rates will vary spending on the storage class and the location of your buckets. 
• Network Usage: The volume of data read or moved between buckets.
• Operation Usage: data operations and activities performed in Cloud Storage.
• Retrieval & Early Deletion Fees: Applicable when data is retrieved from Nearline, Coldline, or Archive.

Cloud Storage also offers resources at no cost as part of the Google Cloud Free Tier — up to a certain limit. Monthly limits for free usage include:

• 5 GB-months of regional storage (US regions only) per month
• 5,000 Class A Operations per month
• 50,000 Class B Operations per month
• 100 GB of outbound data transfer from North America to all region destinations (excluding China and Australia) per month

Google Cloud Networking Pricing

Google Cloud Network pricing is based on the flow of inbound and outbound data and not data transfer types. Factors like the original location of data, destination, and additional services determine the cost.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Pricing

VPC costs are calculated based on the type of traffic and the particular storage tiers used.

• Ingress Traffic: Traffic that flows into Google Cloud resources. There is no cost for ingress traffic but charges may be incurred for using resources that process ingress traffic.
• Egress Traffic:Traffic that flows out of Google Cloud resources hosted in a Google region. The cost of egress traffic may be based on the use of IP addresses, crossing regional boundaries or time zones, and whether or not traffic remains in Google Cloud or leaves it.

There are two tiers available for data transfers between Google Cloud instances and users:

• Premium Tier: The default tier for egress traffic that offers the best performance. The premium tier uses Google’s worldwide infrastructure with multiple points of presence (PoPs) to route traffic with minimal congestion. As the name implies, this tier comes at the highest cost. 
• Standard Tier: The most economical tier, best suited for single-region deployments.The standard tier uses the public internet and depends on public internet service providers to handle traffic. Only available in particular regions. 

Cloud CDN Pricing

Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) are priced according to the following factors:

• Cache Data Transfer Out: $0.02-$0.20 per GiB
• Requests sent to external backends from Cloud CDN: Based on Compute Engine internet data transfer out rates
• Requests for Web Cache (HTTP/HTTPS) Lookup: $0.0075 per 10,000 requests
• Cache Fill: between $0.01 and $0.04 per GiB

Google Cloud SQL Pricing

Google Cloud SQL database service helps organizations set up and maintain relational databases in Google Cloud. There are two editions available — Enterprise and Enterprise Plus — that provide different levels of availability, performance and data protection. 

SQL pricing includes four charges: 

• CPU & Memory Pricing: Select up to 96 CPUs and 624 GB of memory for Enterprise edition or up to 128 CPUs and 864 GB of memory for Enterprise Plus edition. Pricing varies according to the region where your instance is located. 
• Storage & Networking Pricing: Pricing for storage and networking based on the location of the instance. Fees will vary according to the destination of traffic and the involvement of a partner, in certain instances. 
• Instance Pricing: Relevant for shared-core instances, rather than dedicated-core instances. Cost is determined by each second that the instance runs, with activation policy set to “always.” Billing is based on every second that the instance is running.
• Extended Support Pricing: Extended support pricing applies to Cloud SQL instances running with major versions that are in extended support. It is priced per vCPU per hour and charged for every second that the instance is running.

Google Cloud Function Pricing

Google Cloud Functions gives developers the ability to create their code and hand it off to Google for implementation, so functions can be developed without considering the underlying cloud infrastructure.

Factors involved in the cost of Google Cloud Functions include:

• Function Invocations: Invocations are billed consistently, regardless of the invocation source. The first two million invocations per month are free, then $0.40 per million afterwards. 
• Compute Time: The amount of time from the point your function gets a request to the point it’s completed. 
• Networking: Outbound information transfer is calculated in gigabytes and billed at flat rate. No charge for outbound data to different Google APIs in the same location/region or for inbound data. 

Google Cloud Run Pricing

Google Cloud Run is used to deploy containerized applications. Cloud Run is billed based on resource usage, calculated up to the closest 100 milliseconds. Each of these resources is available at the free tier price point as well. 

How Does Google Cloud Pricing Compare to Others?

Ultimately, Google Cloud pricing is comparable to other cloud providers like AWS and Azure. However, you’re much more likely to save money with a long-term plan using Google Cloud. And when you work with a Google Partner like Promevo, you can be sure that you’re getting the best cloud services at a price that fits your budget. 

At Promevo, we help you harness the robust capabilities of Google to accelerate the growth of your company and give you the momentum you need to achieve your most ambitious business goals.

As your trusted service partner, Promevo supports your business with a robust suite of services, including:

• Consulting, implementation, and training spanning the entire Google ecosystem of products and services 
• Google Workspace administration via our proprietary gPanel® platform 
• Chrome device deployment and management
• Google Cloud solutions tailored to your business needs
• Expert guidance on the latest Google technologies
• Access to additional Google partners like CloudM, BrainStorm, and more 

With our expert consultation, comprehensive support, and exceptional service from end-to-end, you can drive productivity and accelerate the growth of your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you buy Google storage without a subscription?

You can use Google’s Free Tier to use Google Cloud storage features for free.

Which is cheaper: AWS or Google?

Google Cloud Platform and AWS both support per-second and per-minute billing for various services. GCP competes with AWS having similar price ranges for storage services.

Google does cost more for compute optimized instances, but has double the RAM of alternatives like AWS. Both platforms offer discounts if you commit for a minimum of 1 year.