Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is one of the world’s leading cloud service providers, offering a wide range of services to meet the needs of businesses and developers. When considering using Google Cloud, it is essential to understand the costs associated with using their services. In this article, we’ll look at the various pricing models offered by Google Cloud, along with examples to better understand how their pricing system works.
Google Cloud Pricing Models:
Pay-as-you-go pricing:
The pay-as-you-go pricing model is the most common on Google Cloud. With this model, you only pay for the resources you consume. This means that you are charged based on the computing resources, storage, bandwidth, and other services you use. It is a flexible model that is suitable for businesses of all sizes, as it allows you to adapt to the changing needs of your business.
Commitment-based pricing:
Google Cloud also offers a commitment pricing model for businesses that want to take advantage of lower pricing by committing to use specific resources over some time. For example, you can sign up for a one- or three-year commitment to get price reductions on virtual machine (VM) instances or other specific services.
Transaction-Based Pricing:
For specific Google Cloud services, such as Cloud Pub/Sub or Cloud Spanner, pricing is based on the number of transactions performed. You are charged based on the number of I/O operations, reads, writes, or data transfers you perform.
Examples of Google Cloud Pricing:
Example of Virtual Machine (VM) Pricing:
Suppose you use a VM instance with two vCPU and 8 GB RAM for 730 hours monthly. The rate for this instance is $0.085 per hour. The calculation would be as follows:
$0.085 (rate per hour) x 730 hours = $62.05 for the month.
Example of Object Storage Pricing (Cloud Storage):
If you store 100 GB of data in Cloud Storage for a month, the rate is $0.026 per GB per month. The calculation would be as follows:
$0.026 (price per GB per month) x 100 GB = $2.60 for the month.
Example of Network Pricing (Network egress):
Suppose you transfer 500 GB of data from Google Cloud to the Internet using the public network. The pricing for the egress is $0.12 per GB. The calculation would be as follows:
$0.12 (price per GB) x 500 GB = $60.00 for the month.
It is important to note that the prices and pricing examples mentioned above are subject to change and may vary by region and specific Google Cloud services.
Understanding Google Cloud’s pricing models is critical to estimating and managing the costs associated with using their services. The pay-per-use pricing model offers excellent flexibility, while the commitment-based model offers discounts for long-term commitments. The pricing examples above illustrate how costs can vary depending on the resources you use and the amounts of data transferred. To optimize your prices on Google Cloud, it is recommended that you regularly monitor your resource consumption and use the cost management tools offered by Google Cloud to track and control your expenses.