Cost optimization on Google Cloud for developers and operators

This page is intended for developers and operators who are either new to Google Cloud or are existing customers. If you want to learn more about designing a cost-optimized foundation on Google Cloud, start here. You can also learn more about reducing costs in technical articles, labs and training materials, marketing and consulting content, and presentations from technology conferences like Google Cloud Next.

Technical content

Read about cost optimization across an array of topics, from a high-level look at Google Cloud to more in-depth discussions of Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), machine learning, serverless, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Google Cloud.

Google Cloud

• Understanding the principles of cost optimization: whitepaper and blog post. This material presents a cost-optimization strategy that helps you reduce your cloud spending.
• Best practices for optimizing your cloud spending: blog post and podcast. This content walks you through some common areas people tend to miss when looking for ways to reduce costs.
• Google Cloud Architecture Framework describes best practices and makes implementation recommendations. The document goes beyond cost optimization and into detail about products and services from a developer's perspective. The framework aims to help you design your Google Cloud deployment so that it best matches your business needs.
• Find more in our cost-management blog posts.

Compute Engine

• 5 best practices for Compute Engine cost optimization. This blog post walks you through best practices to help you analyze and optimize Compute Engine costs using autoscaling, preemptible VMs and more.
• Cost optimization through automated VM management. This guide takes you through various ways to control your fleet of Compute Engine VMs, ranging from simple time-based scheduling to using Recommender analytics and the differences between suspending, stopping and deleting instances. See also the blog post.
• Save money by stopping and starting Compute Engine instances on schedule. This blog post shows how you can optimize your costs by stopping your Compute Engine instances when you are not using them—for example, during non-business hours.
• Cleaning up Compute Engine instances at scale. This tutorial shows how you can automatically delete instances after a specified amount of time.
• Delete idle Compute Engine instances automatically. This tutorial leverages the Recommender API to identify, stop, or delete instances that are no longer in active use.

GKE

• Best practices for running cost-optimized Kubernetes applications on GKE. This document discusses GKE features, options, and best practices for running cost-effective applications on GKE to take advantage of the elasticity provided by Google Cloud.
• Monitoring GKE clusters for cost optimization using Cloud Monitoring. This tutorial walks you through a process for setting up dashboards and alerting policies for the most common causes of over-provisioning on GKE.
• Estimate your GKE costs early in the development cycle using either GitLab or GitHub. These tutorials demonstrate how to automatically estimate cost early in the software process during development and at code review time. This way, practitioners can understand and discuss alternatives for the cost impact of new features and bug fixes before it becomes a problem in your bill.
• Optimizing resource usage in a multi-tenant GKE cluster using node auto-provisioning. This tutorial shows you how to run batch jobs using node auto-provisioning and an optimize-utilization profile to scale a multi-tenant GKE cluster, and how to use Workload Identity to control tenant access to resources like Cloud Storage buckets.
• Reducing costs by scaling down GKE clusters during off-peak hours. This tutorial explains how to reduce costs by using a scheduled autoscaler that scales clusters up or down for predictable demand. For example, you can reduce costs by scaling down your cluster to a minimum during the night.
• Run web applications on GKE using cost-optimized Spot VMs. This tutorial shows you how to handle preemptions while running Spot VMs on GKE that's serving a web application.
• GKE Cost Optimization Playlist. This playlist explores the best practices, tips, and cost-saving secrets for working with GKE in a series of short 5 minute videos.
• Optimize Costs for GKE. In this Google Cloud Skills Boost Quest, you complete a series of hands-on labs to learn about the tools and techniques that help optimize resource usage and eliminate unnecessary costs on GKE.
• Scaling Workloads across multiple dimensions in GKE. This blog post explains how you can configure horizontal and vertical pod autoscaling with a single resource in GKE using multidimensional pod autoscaling. This enables users to dynamically size workload memory requests while still achieving horizontal autoscaling.

VMware Engine

• Optimize the cost of your Google Cloud VMware Engine deployments. This blog post provides cost optimization strategies for private clouds on VMware Engine.

Cloud Storage

• Best practices for Cloud Storage cost optimization. This blog post offers Cloud Storage tips on topics such as retention periods, access patterns, and performance considerations.

Bigtable

• A primer on Bigtable cost optimization. This blog post reviews the billable components of Bigtable, discusses the impact that various resource changes can have on cost, and introduces several high-level best practices that might help manage resource consumption for your most demanding workloads.
• Take a tour of best practices for Bigtable performance and cost optimization. This guide builds on the previous blog post, providing best practices for optimizing a Bigtable deployment for cost savings. A series of options are presented and the respective tradeoffs to be considered are discussed.

BigQuery

• Cost optimization best practices for BigQuery. This blog post helps you reduce your BigQuery costs without compromising performance.

Machine learning

• Best practices for performance and cost optimization for machine learning. This guide presents best practices for how you can enhance the performance and decrease the costs of your machine learning (ML) workloads on Google Cloud, from experimentation to production.

Serverless

• Managing cost and reliability in fully managed applications. This blog post presents some practices for keeping costs in check by running applications in a fully managed serverless environment.
• Optimizing for long-term cost management in fully managed applications. This blog post presents several general optimizations that you can make to increase the overall efficiency of your fully managed serverless applications.

Networking

• Networking cost optimization best practices: an overview. This blog post walks you through tips and considerations to think about as you design a reliable, sound, and cost-optimized network architecture.

Operations

• Cost optimization for Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, and Application Performance Management. This document describes how to understand your usage of these services and manage your costs so that you're not paying for resources you don't use. See also Stack Doctor episode on YouTube.
• Automating cost optimizations with Cloud Functions, Cloud Scheduler, and Cloud Monitoring. This tutorial guides you through how to use Cloud Functions to clean up unused IP addresses and orphaned persistent disks.

Hands-on labs and training

• Managing Google Cloud Costs Skills Boost Quest. This Quest is most suitable for those working in a technology or finance role who are responsible for managing Google Cloud costs. You learn how to set up a billing account, organize resources, and manage billing access permissions. In the hands-on labs, you learn how to view your invoice, track your Google Cloud costs with Billing reports, analyze your billing data with BigQuery or Google Sheets, and create custom billing dashboards with Looker Studio.
• Optimizing Google Cloud Cost Skills Boost Quest. This Quest is most suitable for those in a Finance or IT related role responsible for optimizing their organization's cloud infrastructure. You learn several ways to control and optimize your Google Cloud costs, including setting up budgets and alerts, managing quota limits, and taking advantage of committed use discounts. In the hands-on labs, you practice using various tools to control and optimize your costs or to influence your technology teams to apply the best practices for cost optimization.
• Cost Management on Google Cloud. This YouTube playlist groups a set of short videos and talks that discuss best practices for monitoring, controlling, and managing your costs with Google Cloud's cost-management tools.

Marketing and consulting content

• Premium Support. Our Google Cloud Professional Services can walk Premium Support customers through a cost-optimization workshop to help you identify relevant and actionable optimizations. Contact your sales representative for more information.
• Google Cloud Cost Management homepage. This is the main homepage for Billing and Cost Management tools. Google Cloud's cost management tools provide the visibility, accountability, control, and intelligence that you need in order to confidently scale your business in the cloud.
• Solving for operational efficiency page. This page offers a central repository for operational efficiency content and programs.
• IT Cost Assessment program. This engagement program helps you understand how your company's IT spending compares to your industry peers, letting you identify and unlock value that you can reinvest for growth.