GCP Free Tier Complete Guide (2026)

The GCP free tier is built around two layers: Always Free (no expiration) and a $300 credit (90 days). Unlike AWS, most of it is permanent, which makes personal projects, learning, and small SaaS workloads runnable for free. This article covers every Always Free item and the architectures that get the most out of them.

$300 Free Credit (New Accounts)

Automatically granted to new GCP accounts
Valid for 90 days
Usable across all services
Always Free continues after the credit is exhausted
Services stop automatically when the credit runs out (no overcharges)
Billing only starts after you upgrade to a paid account

Complete Always Free List (Key Services)

Compute

Service	Free quota / month	Regions
Compute Engine	1 e2-micro VM + 30 GB HDD + 5 GB snapshot	us-west1 / east1 / central1
Cloud Run	2M requests + 360,000 GB-s memory + 180,000 vCPU-s	All regions
Cloud Functions 2nd gen	2M requests + 400,000 GB-s + 200,000 vCPU-s	All regions
App Engine Standard	28 instance-hours / day	All regions

Storage & Databases

Service	Free quota / month
Cloud Storage	5 GB Standard (us- regions)
BigQuery	1 TB of queries + 10 GB of storage
Firestore	1 GB storage + 50K reads / 20K writes / 20K deletes
Cloud SQL	—

Networking

Service	Free quota / month
Egress (US/EU/CA)	1 GB
Cloud DNS	—
Cloud NAT	—

Operations / DevOps

Service	Free quota / month
Cloud Logging	50 GB ingestion
Cloud Monitoring	Unlimited GCP metrics
Cloud Trace	2.5M spans
Cloud Profiler	Completely free
Cloud Build	120 build-minutes
Pub/Sub	10 GB
Artifact Registry	0.5 GB

AI / ML

Service	Free quota / month
Vision API	1,000 units per feature
Speech-to-Text	60 minutes
Translation	500K characters
Natural Language	5K units
Google AI Studio (Gemini)	Generous RPD limits

Free-Tier Architecture Examples

Personal Blog (SSG)

Cloud Storage (Standard, us-): static site hosting
Cloud CDN: delivery within the free quota
Custom domain + HTTPS certificate: free
First 1 GB of egress per month is free
Monthly cost: $0 to a few cents

Personal SaaS Backend

Cloud Run: backend API (free up to 2M requests)
Firestore: NoSQL DB (free up to 1 GB + 50K reads/day)
Cloud Storage: file storage (5 GB)
Cloud Build: CI/CD (120 minutes)
Artifact Registry: container images (0.5 GB)
Monthly cost: $0 to a few cents (small workloads run free)

Personal ML Experimentation

Google AI Studio: Gemini Flash for free (with RPD limits)
Vertex AI Workbench: GPU training using the $300 credit
BigQuery: large-scale analytics within the 1 TB query quota
BigQuery ML: machine learning straight from SQL

Comparison with AWS Free Tier

Item	GCP	AWS
Credit	$300 / 90 days	—
Always Free	Many services (no expiration)	Some services (no expiration)
12-month free	—	Many services (EC2 t2.micro, etc.)
BigQuery / Athena	1 TB of BigQuery queries	Athena free (S3 scan charges apply)
Serverless free quota	Cloud Run 2M requests	Lambda 1M requests

Best Practices to Maximize the Free Tier

Pick an Always Free region such as us-west1
Set a $1 budget alert to prevent accidental charges
Keep min instances at 0 on Cloud Run / Functions (accept cold starts)
Reduce BigQuery scans with partitioning and explicit column selection
Use only the Cloud Storage Standard class (Nearline is billable)
Cache egress through Cloud CDN and keep traffic in-region inside GCP
Disable APIs you don't need (such as Cloud Endpoints)

Is the GCP free tier really permanent?

Yes, the Always Free tier has no expiration. Unlike the AWS Free Tier (limited to 12 months), it continues indefinitely. The $300 credit (90 days) is for new accounts only.

What can you do with the free tier?

You get one e2-micro VM, 5 GB of Cloud Storage, 1 TB of BigQuery queries, 2 million Cloud Run requests, 1 GB of Firestore, and more. Small applications can run entirely free.

Is a credit card required?

Yes, to claim the $300 credit. However, you are not billed before upgrading, and services stop automatically when the credit runs out (no overcharges).

Are there region restrictions on Always Free?

Yes: e2-micro is limited to us-west1, us-east1, and us-central1. Cloud Storage requires a us- region, while Cloud Run is available globally. See the official list for details.

Are there free programs for students and researchers?

Yes — Google for Education, Google Research Credits, and Google Cloud Workshops offer additional credits. Startups can apply to the Google for Startups Cloud Program.

How does it compare with AWS Free Tier?

GCP is centered on Always Free (no expiration), while AWS is centered on a 12-month free tier plus a smaller Always Free set. GCP is better suited for long-running experiments.

How do I get notified if I exceed the free tier?

Set up a $1 budget alert under Cloud Billing → Budgets. You can also wire up Pub/Sub to a Cloud Function to automatically stop services.

What is the best architecture for personal projects?

Cloud Run + Firestore + Cloud Storage + Cloud Build. A few thousand requests per month stays essentially free, and custom domains with HTTPS are also free.

Check what you learned with practice questions

Practice with certification-focused question sets

View GCP Exam Prep

Author

NicheeLab Editorial Team

NicheeLab editorial team focused on data engineering and cloud certification learning. Content is structured around practical study needs and official exam domains.

GCP Free Tier (Always Free) Complete Guide: Permanent Free + $300 Credit