Google Cloud (GCP) pricing is built on pay-as-you-go usage plus a mix of automatic and manual discounts. This article covers everything: Sustained Use Discount, CUD, Spot VM, Always Free, billing management, and an AWS comparison.
| Discount | Applies to | Rate | How it applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustained Use Discount | GCE / Cloud SQL / GKE | Up to 30% | Automatic (based on monthly usage) |
| Committed Use Discount (Resource) | GCE, GKE, etc. | 1y 37% / 3y 57% | 1-3 year commitment |
| Flex CUD (Spend-based) | Compute services | 1y 28% / 3y 46% | 1-3 year $/hr commitment |
| Spot VM | GCE, GKE, etc. | Up to 91% | Interruptible workloads |
| Always Free | Many services | Permanent free tier | Automatic |
| Service | Pricing Unit |
|---|---|
| Compute Engine | vCPU / memory / storage time |
| Cloud Run | Requests + vCPU/memory-seconds |
| Cloud Functions 2nd gen | Requests + vCPU/memory-seconds |
| GKE Standard | Control Plane $0.10/hr + node VMs |
| GKE Autopilot | Pod vCPU/memory-seconds |
| Cloud Storage | $/GB/month (by class) + operations + egress |
| BigQuery | $6.25/TB scanned or Slot-hours |
| Cloud SQL | vCPU + memory + storage + IO |
| Spanner | Processing Units + storage |
| Pub/Sub | $40/TB (ingest + deliver) |
| Service | Free Tier / month |
|---|---|
| Compute Engine | 1 e2-micro instance (us-west1 / east1 / central1 only) |
| Cloud Storage | 5 GB (Standard, us- regions) |
| BigQuery | 1 TB queries + 10 GB storage |
| Cloud Run | 2M requests + vCPU/memory-seconds |
| Cloud Functions 2nd gen | 2M requests + 400K GB-seconds |
| Cloud Logging | 50 GB ingestion |
| Pub/Sub | 10 GB |
| Firestore | 1 GB + 50K reads / 20K writes / 20K deletes |
| Cloud Build | 120 build-minutes |
| Vision API | 1,000 units per feature |
| Translation | 500K characters |
| Category | GCP | AWS |
|---|---|---|
| VM list price | Comparable | Comparable |
| Automatic discount | Sustained Use up to 30% | — |
| Commitment discount | CUD 1y 37% / 3y 57% | RI 1y 40% / 3y 60%; Savings Plans 1y 31% / 3y 50% |
| Spot | Up to 91% | Up to 90% |
| Free tier | Always Free (permanent) + $300 credit | 12-month Free Tier + Always Free |
| Region | VM Price Multiplier | Use case |
|---|---|---|
| us-central1 (Iowa) | 1.0x (baseline) | Cheapest; English-speaking markets |
| asia-northeast1 (Tokyo) | ~1.10x | Production for Japan |
| asia-northeast2 (Osaka) | ~1.10x | DR pair |
| asia-southeast1 (Singapore) | ~1.07x | Southeast Asia |
| europe-west1 (Belgium) | ~1.05x | Europe |
How is GCP priced?
Pay-as-you-go is the baseline, combined with Sustained Use Discount (automatic, up to 30%), Committed Use Discount (CUD, up to 70% with a 1-3 year commitment), Spot VM (up to 91%), and Always Free (permanent free tier).
What about the $300 free credit?
New accounts get a $300 credit valid for 90 days. During that window you can freely try VMs, BigQuery, Cloud Run, and other major services.
How do Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) work?
Commit to 1 or 3 years to receive a discount. There are two types: Resource-based (fixed to a VM family) and Spend-based (flexible, aka Flex CUD). Flex CUD is recommended for production due to its flexibility.
How do I set up billing alerts?
In the Cloud Billing Console, create a Budget, set thresholds (50/90/100%), and choose Email or Pub/Sub notifications. You can also trigger automated shutdown actions via Cloud Functions through Pub/Sub.
How do I view cost reports?
Use Cloud Billing → Reports to aggregate by service, project, or label. For deeper analysis, export billing data to BigQuery and visualize it in Looker Studio.
How do GCP prices compare to AWS?
VM list prices are roughly equivalent. BigQuery is cheaper for ad-hoc queries on GCP, while reserved Slots make long-term analytics workloads comparable. Sustained Use Discount is unique to GCP and delivers meaningful effective discounts.
Are Asia regions more expensive?
asia-northeast1 (Tokyo) is 10-20% pricier than us-central1. Use us-central1 if cost is the top priority, Tokyo if latency matters most, or run in both regions for redundancy.
Where can I get my invoice?
Download PDFs from Cloud Billing → Documents. You can also enable BigQuery billing export to run daily SQL aggregations — a FinOps fundamental.
Related: Pricing & Cost
GCP 無料枠 (Always Free) 完全活用ガイド｜永続無料・$300 クレジット (2026)
Google Cloud の無料枠を完全網羅。Always Free (無期限) と $300 クレジット (90 日)、e2-micro / BigQuery 1TB / Cloud Run 200 万 req / Firestore 1GB の活用法、AWS Free Tier 比較、個人開発・学習に最適な構成を解説。
Compute Engine / GKE コスト最適化ガイド｜Spot・CUD・Recommender (GCP)
Google Compute Engine と GKE のコスト最適化を完全網羅。Spot VM、Sustained Use Discount、Flex CUD、Recommender API、Autopilot vs Standard、HPA/VPA/CA、Custom Machine Type、GPU/TPU 最適化を 2026 年最新版で解説。
GCP 環境構築 完全チュートリアル｜アカウント・組織・IAM・Billing 初期設定 (2026)
Google Cloud (GCP) の環境構築を 0 から完全網羅。アカウント作成、$300 クレジット、Organization / Folder / Project 設計、Billing アラート、IAM 設計、API 有効化、Cloud Shell、リージョン選定を 2026 年最新版で解説。
GCP vs AWS コンピュート徹底比較｜EC2/GCE・GKE/EKS・Lambda/Cloud Run・料金 (2026)
GCP と AWS のコンピュートサービスを徹底比較。Compute Engine vs EC2、GKE vs EKS、Cloud Run vs Lambda、App Engine vs Elastic Beanstalk、GPU/TPU、Arm 系 (Axion vs Graviton)、料金体系・Sustained Use Discount を 2026 年最新版で網羅。
* Google Cloud is a trademark of Google LLC. For the latest pricing, check the official GCP pricing page.
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