View your billing reports and cost trends

The Cloud Billing Reports page shows your Google Cloud usage costs at a glance and discover and analyze trends. The Reports page displays a chart that plots usage costs for all projects linked to a Cloud Billing account. To help you view the cost trends that are important to you, you can select a data range, specify a time range, configure the chart filters, and group by project, service, SKU, or location.

Cloud Billing reports can help you answer questions like these:

  • How is my current month's Google Cloud spending trending?
  • What Google Cloud project cost the most last month?
  • What Google Cloud service (for example, Compute Engine or Cloud Storage) cost me the most?
  • What are my forecasted future costs based on historical trends?
  • How much am I spending by region?
  • What was the cost of resources with label X?

Permissions required to access reports

You can view cost reports for a Cloud Billing account (including viewing the costs for more than one project linked to the billing account), or you can view cost reports for individual projects. To view all costs for a Cloud Billing account, you need permissions on the Cloud Billing account. To view all costs for an individual project, you only need permissions on the project.

  • To view the Cloud Billing reports for your Cloud Billing account, including viewing the cost information for all of the Google Cloud projects that are linked to the account, you need a role on your Cloud Billing account that includes the following permission:

    • billing.accounts.getSpendingInformation

    To gain this permission using a predefined role, ask your administrator to grant you one of the following Cloud Billing IAM roles on your Cloud Billing account:

    • Billing Account Administrator
    • Billing Account Costs Manager
    • Billing Account Viewer
  • To view the Cloud Billing reports for a project, you need a role on the project that includes the following permissions:

    • billing.resourceCosts.get
    • resourcemanager.projects.get

    To gain these permissions using a predefined role, ask your administrator to grant you one of the following basic IAM roles on your project:

    • Project Viewer
    • Project Editor
    • Project Owner

For more information about Cloud Billing permissions, see:

For more information about Google Cloud project permissions, see:

Access the reports page

To view the cost reports for your Cloud Billing account or project:

  1. Using the procedure that fits your level of access to Cloud Billing accounts, go to your Cloud Billing account in the Billing section of the Google Cloud console:

    Users with Cloud Billing account permissions Users with project-level permissions only

    If you have Cloud Billing account permissions, you can select from a list of billing accounts that you have permissions to access.

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to your Cloud Billing account.

      Go to your Cloud Billing account
    2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account for which you'd like to view cost reports.

      The Billing Overview page opens for the selected billing account.

    If you only have project permissions, but don't have any permissions on your project's Cloud Billing account, you'll need to select your project before you navigate to the Billing section.

    1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console dashboard and select a project.

      Open Google Cloud console
    2. Select a project for which you'd like to view cost reports.
    3. Next, navigate to Billing: Open the Google Cloud console Navigation menu , and then select Billing.

      If you are prompted to choose which billing account you want to view and manage, click Go to linked billing account to view the billing account that is linked to your selected project.

      The Billing Overview page opens for the selected billing account.

  2. In the Cost management section of the Billing navigation menu, select Reports.

    The Report page opens using default settings, displaying all costs for the current month, grouped by service.

    • If you have billing-account-level permissions, you can see costs for all of the projects linked to the billing account.
    • If you are a project user, and are accessing the Cloud Billing account using project permissions only, you can see costs for a single project – the project that you selected in the Google Cloud console before you accessed the Billing section.

How to read the Cloud Billing report chart

The report chart displays a stacked bar chart where each bar plots costs over time. The Group by setting determines what each stack in the bar represents (each grouping gets its own stack in the bar chart and row in the table).

You have a variety of options available to customize your report views, including filters and other settings. Your report view changes depending on the filter selections you choose.

The default view uses the Date > Service group by setting. In the default view:

  • The report displays the current month's daily usage-specific costs grouped by service (for all Google Cloud projects), inclusive of any usage-specific credits applied. The report shows services that incurred usage-specific costs for the month.

  • The summary tiles above the chart provide a split view of cost: actual cost-to-date for the current month, and the total forecasted cost for the entire current month.

  • A cost trend line in the chart indicates the direction your forecasted cost is trending.

  • Each stacked bar in the chart (and row in the summary table) corresponds to the service, ranked largest to smallest by cost.

  • The summary footer, below the table, displays a breakdown of the cost totals. Based on the report settings and filters, and your level of permissions to view the Cloud Billing account, the footer totals can include invoice-level costs and credits such as taxes and adjustments. If your permissions limit your billing report access to viewing costs for a single project, you won't see invoice-level charges.

Example of the billing report chart.

Note that the report's default settings are different if you access the report from the Budget and alerts page—the report's timeframe and filters are configured using the budget's scope settings. For details, see Viewing a budget in your report.

Adjust chart settings

Time aggregation

You can specify a different time aggregation using the date-based and month-based group by settings. To see cumulative costs, select the Show cumulative option for the chart.

A Daily time period in the Cloud Billing report starts at midnight US and Canadian Pacific Time (UTC-8), and observes daylight saving time shifts in the United States.

Change time aggregation.

Chart style

You can specify a different chart display style using the Line Chart/Bar Chart selector at the top right of the chart.

Change chart display style.

Data order

The order of the data displayed in the stacked line or bar chart is controlled by the data category you are sorting on, as indicated by an arrow in the column header in the summary table. You can change the sort order of the data by clicking on a different column header. The direction of the arrow indicates if you are sorting in descending order – largest to smallest (down arrow ) or ascending order – smallest to largest (up arrow ). To reverse the sort order on the selected column, click the column header again.

Set sort order of data by clicking on the column header.

Manage report view and settings

Use the various report settings and filters to customize the report view. You can select a preset view, and you can further refine the data displayed in the report by adjusting the time range, group by, and filter settings.

Grouping and filtering options in the reports page.

Preset views

Preset views setting in the filters panel.

The following preset views are available:

  1. Current month, all projects (default): The current calendar month's daily cost for all services and SKUs, grouped by Project, inclusive of any usage-specific credits applied, but does not include invoice-level charges such as taxes and adjustments.
  2. Current month, all services: Same as (1), but grouped by Service (for example, Compute Engine or Cloud Storage).
  3. Last month, all projects: The last calendar month's (not the last 30 days') daily cost for all services and SKUs, grouped by Project, inclusive of any usage-specific credits applied, but does not include invoice-level charges such as taxes and adjustments.
  4. Last month, all services: Same as (3), but grouped by services.
  5. Last invoice month: The most recent complete invoice month's daily cost for all services and SKUs, grouped by Service, inclusive of credits and invoice-level charges, such as tax.

    If you have billing-account-level permissions, using this preset, you can quickly view a report with totals that map to your invoice or statement. If your permissions limit your billing report access to viewing costs for a single project, you will not see invoice-level charges.

    Note that Billing Reports aggregates all invoice costs for the invoice month, and not by individual invoice. If you receive more than one invoice in a month, your invoice month totals might not map to the totals of an individual invoice issued in the same month. If you want to view detailed costs per individual invoice, see the cost table report.

Time range

You can select between Usage date or Invoice month.

A 24-hour time period in the Cloud Billing report starts at midnight US and Canadian Pacific Time (UTC-8), and observes daylight saving time shifts in the United States.

The report's time range setting in the filters panel.

  • Usage date returns actual usage and cost data incurred during the date range selected. When you select Usage date, you can choose a preset or custom time range for charting cost data (available back to January 2017).

    Note that when you set the report time range by Usage date, the Cost column displays your costs calculated using the prices that are applicable to your Cloud Billing account. If your Cloud Billing account is associated with a custom pricing contract, the negotiated savings are included in the Cost calculations.

  • Invoice month returns usage and charges on the invoice(s) issued for the month(s) selected. If you select Invoice month, you can set a range based on complete months (available back to May 2019).

    Note that when you set the report time range by Invoice month, starting with the May 2021 invoice, Cloud Billing accounts associated with a custom pricing contract display Negotiated savings as a credit column, separate from the List cost. List costs are your costs calculated using the list price, prior to applying your negotiated savings or any other discounts.

Group by

Costs in the report are summarized by the selected Group by option. The Group by option determines the columns that appear in the table. Each grouping gets its own line (or bar) in the chart and row in the table. The Group by option also affects the report data that you can download to a CSV file.

The Group by options include the following:

Setting the Group by option in the filters panel.

  • Subaccount: If you're viewing a primary billing account with subaccounts, you can select this group by option to summarize your costs by subaccount.

  • Project: When grouped by Project, the table includes columns for Project (this is the project name), Project ID, and Project number. When grouping by Project, costs that don't belong to a project display as [Charges not specific to a project].

    The Project number is a Google-assigned, anonymized number automatically generated for each project you create. In your support cases and other customer communication, Google refers to your projects by the project number. The project number persists after you delete a project, and any costs associated with deleted projects are identified with the project number. Learn more about identifying projects.

  • Project hierarchy: Project hierarchy is the project's ancestry, the resource hierarchy mapping of a project (Organization > Folder > Project). When grouped by Project hierarchy, the report returns a row for each unique combination of Organization > Folder > Project, and the table includes columns for Project, Project ID, Project number, and Project hierarchy. The values listed in the Project hierarchy column show Organization name > Folder name.

    Projects can stand alone or be the child of an organization or folder. When grouping by Project hierarchy, projects that stand alone display as [Project not associated with any folders or organizations]. The project hierarchy group by option is selectable when the report's time range is set to start on or after January 1, 2022. Learn more about analyzing costs by project hierarchy.

  • Service: When grouped by Service, your costs and credits are summarized by Service, such as Compute Engine and BigQuery.

  • SKU: When grouped by SKU, the table includes columns for SKU, Service, SKU ID, and Usage. Cost and credits are calculated per SKU and SKU pricing tiers. Grouping by SKU is useful when you want to analyze the details and breakdown of your costs and credits.

  • Location: Region or multi-region*: When grouped by Location, your costs and credits are summarized by the Regions where your applications are located. When grouping by Location, costs that don't belong to a region or multi-region display as [Charges not specific to a location]. Multi-region listings are marked with an asterisk (for example, us*). Learn more about geography and regions.

  • Date-based group by options: The default group by setting is Date > Service, which shows your costs summarized by the date, and then by service. When you choose a date-based group by option, each row in the report's table shows the total cost for each day. You can expand the row for a day to see your costs summarized by the additional dimension. For example, choose Date > Project to see each day's costs broken down by project.

  • Month-based group by options: When you choose a time range that is longer than 30 days, you can choose month-based group by options, such as Month > Project, which summarizes your costs by month, and then by project.

  • Label keys: Grouping by Label keys summarizes costs by each label value that is paired with the selected label key (for example, key1:value-A, key1:value-B, key1:value-C). Costs that are not tagged with the selected Label key are summarized as [Charges for other usage]. Learn more about creating and managing resource labels.

    The Cloud Billing report shows you the cost data for a specific label only after the label was added to a resource. For example, if you add the label environment:dev to a Compute Engine VM on January 15, 2024, any analysis for environment:dev includes only the usage for that VM since January 15.

    When grouping by label keys, you don't see labels applied to a project. You see other user-created labels that you set up and applied to Google Cloud services. For more information, see common uses of labels.

  • No grouping (show total cost only): Summarizes the total cost for the specified time range and selected filters.

Filters

Use filters to refine the data that is returned to your report.

Various filter selectors in the filters panel.

  • Subaccounts: If you're viewing a primary billing account with subaccounts, you can select all subaccounts (default) or select a subset of subaccounts by clicking them in the list.

  • Folders & Organizations: Folders and organizations are part of a project hierarchy, the resource hierarchy mapping of a project. If the time range is configured to start on or after January 1, 2022, you can select all folders/organizations (default) that are associated with the projects that are linked to the Cloud Billing account, or select a subset of folders/organizations.

    The values in the selector are listed in alphabetical order by resource name. To determine if a value is an organization or a folder, look at the ID number displayed below each name. ID numbers are prefaced with folders/ or organizations/ to indicate the type of resource.

    For the Cloud Billing account you are viewing, if none of the linked projects are associated with any folders or organizations, then this filter option is not displayed. Note that you can still group by Project hierarchy. The Project hierarchy column displays [Project not associated with any folders or organizations] for projects that do not have any ancestors.

  • Projects: You can select all Google Cloud projects linked to the Cloud Billing account (default) or select a subset of projects by clicking them in the list.

    If you are viewing the report using project permissions only, the Projects filter is limited to a single project – the project that you selected in the Google Cloud console before you accessed the Billing section. You cannot select a different project. If you want to view the Billing Report for a different project, then you must exit the Billing section, select a different project using the Google Cloud console project selector, and then access the Billing section again.

    If a project is shut down or deleted, the project is listed only by project number.

  • Services: You can select all services (default) or select a subset of services by clicking them in the list.

  • SKUs: You can select all SKUs (default) or select a subset of SKUs by clicking them in the list. To learn more about SKUs, see the pricing table report.

Setting the Locations filters in the filters panel.

  • Locations: By default, all locations are enabled. By clicking the location tiles, you can filter on a subset of locations by geography (such as Europe), multi-region (such as Global), or region (such as us-east1). Specifically, the report is filtered by the regions and multi-regions selected.

    Use the tiles in geography to quickly select (or deselect) all regions and multi-regions in that geography. Multi-regions tiles are marked with an asterisk (for example, us*).

    Learn more about geography and regions.

Setting the Labels filters in the filters panel.

  • Labels: Labels are key/value pairs you attach to resource usage (for example, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, or Google Kubernetes Engine).

    To filter usage by label, follow these steps:

    1. Expand the Labels section.
    2. Select the label Key.
    3. Select the Value under that key you want to filter on (the default is all values under the selected key).

    To add another label with a different key, click + Add Label, and then select the key and value(s) for the label filter.

    To remove a label filter, click the delete icon () to the right of the label fields.

    If you want to view costs for Google Kubernetes Engine, you can filter your resources using the following label keys:

    • goog-fleet-project: Filter cluster resources by fleet host project, if the cluster is registered to a fleet.
    • goog-k8s-cluster-location: Filter GKE resources by location.
    • goog-k8s-cluster-name: Filter GKE resources by cluster.
    • goog-k8s-node-pool-name: Filter cluster resources by node pool.

    To filter GKE resources using the following label keys, you must enable cost allocation for your GKE clusters:

    When filtering by label keys, you cannot select labels applied to a project. You can select other user-created labels that you set up and applied to Google Cloud services. For more information about labels, see common uses of labels and creating and managing resource labels.

Setting the credits and invoice-level charges filters in the filters panel.

  • Credits: You can select all applicable credits (default) to be included in the cost calculations, or you can uncheck some or all of the credit options to exclude credits from the cost calculations.

    The credits filter displays only the specific credit types that you incurred in your Google Cloud costs. If a particular type of credit does not apply to your Cloud Billing account, you will not see that credit option in the list.

    Learn more about viewing your credits.

  • Invoice level charges: If time range is set to Invoice month, you can select all invoice-level charges (default) to be included in the summary cost calculations, or you can uncheck some or all of the invoice-level options. Invoice-level charges display in the summary header above the chart and summary footer below the table. Learn more about viewing your charges by invoice.

Save and share report views

You can set many options to customize your online reports. After configuring your report setting to create a customized view, you might want to save your settings to be reused later by you or someone else in your organization who has the required level of permissions to view reports for the Cloud Billing account. You can use these options to save and share your customized report views:

  • Saved views: Use Saved views to save the chart settings and the group by and filter settings you selected when configuring your report. Saved views are saved in the Reports page and are available for viewing by users in your organization with Cloud Billing account-level access, who can view reports for all costs and projects for the Cloud Billing account.
  • Share: Optionally, you can share the URL of a customized report using the Share button. Share is a quick option to send the URL of a customized report to a recipient of your choice, outside of the Reports UI. As you configure your report by setting filters and groupings, your browser URL updates to include your selections. You can share the report by copying the URL. The Share feature is available to customers with Cloud Billing account-level access, as well as to Project Owners, Project Editors, and Project Viewers who can view Cloud Billing reports for their specific Google Cloud projects.

Shows report's share and saved views options.

Permissions required to create or access a saved view

The saved views feature is available in the Reports page to customers who have the correct level of permissions on the Cloud Billing account. To interact with the Saved views feature in the Reports page, you must have permissions with Cloud Billing account-level access. The roles with the necessary permissions are Billing Account Administrator or Billing Account Viewer on your Cloud Billing account.

  • Billing Account Administrators have full access to the Saved views feature, and can create a new saved view, open a saved view, and update, rename, and delete saved views.
  • Billing Account Viewers have access to open a previouly created saved view, but cannot create new saved views, or update, rename, or delete saved views.
  • If you are a Project Owner, Project Editor, or Project Viewer, you can view Cloud Billing reports for your specific Google Cloud projects. However, since this level of billing access does not allow you to view all costs for all projects linked to the Cloud Billing account, you are not able to create or access saved views in the Reports page. Instead, you can use the Share feature to copy and share the URL of a report you have customized.

For more information about Cloud Billing permissions, see Overview of Cloud Billing access control.

Save a new report view

  1. Go to the Cloud Billing Reports in the Google Cloud console.
  2. Set your preferred chart settings and report grouping and filter settings.
  3. Click Save view.
  4. Enter a name of your saved view (required). By default, a name is autofilled based on the selected filters.
  5. Click Save.

Open a saved view

  1. Go to the Cloud Billing Reports in the Google Cloud console.
  2. Look for the Saved views dropdown box in the header of the report.
  3. Select Saved views to expand the list, then select a view to open your report with the saved settings and filters. If you have many saved views, you can use the list filter tool to narrow down the list of views to choose from.

Update an existing saved view to use different report settings

  1. Go to the Cloud Billing Reports in the Google Cloud console.
  2. Look for the Saved views dropdown box in the header of the report.
  3. Select Saved views to expand the list, then select a view to open your report with the saved settings and filters.
  4. Update the chart settings and report grouping and filters settings to produce a different report view.
  5. Click Save view.
  6. Select Save updates.

    Your updated filter settings are now saved to your existing saved view using the original name of the saved view. Note that if you want to rename your saved view to reflect the updated setting and filters, follow the steps to rename the saved view.

Create a new saved view based on an existing saved view

  1. Go to the Cloud Billing Reports in the Google Cloud console.
  2. Look for the Saved views dropdown box in the header of the report.
  3. Select Saved views to expand the list, then select a view to open your report with the saved settings and filters.
  4. Update the chart settings and report grouping and filters settings to produce a different report view.
  5. Click Save view.
  6. Select Save as new.
  7. Enter a name of your saved view (required). By default, a name is autofilled based on the selected filters.
  8. Click Save.

Rename a saved view

  1. Go to the Cloud Billing Reports in the Google Cloud console.
  2. Look for the Saved views dropdown box in the header of the report.
  3. Select Saved views to expand the list, then select the view you want to rename.
  4. To the right of the dropdown box, select the more options menu ().
  5. Select Rename.
  6. Update the name of the view, and then click Save.

Delete a saved view

  1. Go to the Cloud Billing Reports in the Google Cloud console.
  2. Look for the Saved views dropdown box in the header of the report.
  3. Select Saved views to expand the list, then select the view you want to delete.
  4. To the right of the dropdown box, select the more options menu ().
  5. Select Delete.
  6. Select Confirm to permanently delete the saved view. This action cannot be undone.

Share or bookmark the URL of a customized report

In addition to using the Saved views feature, you can bookmark or share the URL of a report you have customized. As you configure your report by setting filters and groupings, your page URL updates to include your selections.

  • You can share the report by copying the URL. Click Share to copy the URL to your clipboard.
  • Optionally, in your browser, you can bookmark the URL to save the URL with your report settings.

Download filtered report data to a CSV file

You can download the report data to a comma-separated values (CSV) file using the Download CSV selector located above the summary table. The data that downloads is limited by any filters that you have set and includes all of the rows and columns in the summary table of the report, plus additional columns, depending on the Group by setting you select.

Shows report's download CSV button.

CSV file name

For the Reports data, the file name follows this pattern:

[Billing Account name]_Reports, [YYYY-MM-DD] — [YYYY-MM-DD].csv

For example, a CSV file of the Reports data downloaded for a Cloud Billing account named My Billing Account, for a date range of October 1 to December 31, 2022, is named:

My Billing Account_Reports, 2022-10-01 - 2022-12-31.csv

Tip: If you download a report with the same date range multiple times, then the default report name will be the same. If you have configured your report with a specific set of parameters, you might want to rename the CSV file to something that will help you differentiate between reports run using the same date range but using different report settings or filters.

Columns in the CSV file download

The columns of data in a CSV file depend on the Group by setting. Every CSV file includes data for the following charges and credits columns, with amounts aggregated by the Group by cost breakdown.

  • Cost or List cost, depending on the Cloud Billing account and the report settings.
  • Negotiated savings, if applicable for the Cloud Billing account and the report settings.
  • Discounts: includes credits such as sustained use discounts, committed use discounts, and free tiers.
  • Promotions and others: includes free trial and other promotions.
  • Unrounded subtotal: The calculated cost of the usage to a precision of up to six decimal places, which can be helpful when analyzing your cost details and understanding the source of any discrepancies due to rounding.
  • Subtotal: The calculated cost of the usage rounded to two decimal places.

Each currency-column label includes a symbol for the currency of the Cloud Billing account (for example: $ for USD, £ for GBP).

Group by setting

In addition to the charges and credits columns, the Group by option and the Time range settings affect which columns of data are downloaded, and the Group by option affects the granularity of the report. The more granular the report, the more rows are returned.

Group by setting Rows in report Additional columns included in CSV download
Date-based group by (example: Date > Service) One row for each dimension, broken down by date. For example, if you choose Date > Project, the CSV has one row for each project's daily costs. When you select a date-based option, the CSV doesn't include the Percent change column. Date
Month-based group by (example: Month > Service) One row for each dimension, broken down by month. For example, if you choose Month > Project, the CSV has one row for each project's monthly costs. When you select a month-based option, the CSV doesn't include the Percent change column. Month
Project One row with costs summed per each project, with an additional row for costs not specific to a project. Project name, Project ID, Project number
Project Hierarchy One row with costs summed per each project hierarchy, with an additional row for costs not specific to a project, and a row for costs not included in a project hierarchy. Project name, Project ID, Project number, Project hierarchy
Service One row with costs summed per each service (such as Compute Engine, Cloud Run, App Engine). Service description, Service ID
SKU One row with usage and cost details for each SKU. This Group by setting returns the most granular details in the cost reports. Service description, Service ID, SKU description, SKU ID, Usage amount, Usage unit
Subaccount One row with costs summed per each billing account, including the parent account and its subaccounts. Billing account name, Billing account ID
Location: Region or multiregion One row with costs summed per each unique region where usage occurred, including a row for charges not specific to a location. Region
Label keys When grouping by label, you can select one label key at a time. The report returns one row for each unique label key:value pair for the selected label key, and a row for charges for other usage. Label

Additional notes about the CSV

  • The filters you set customize the rows that are displayed in the table, and the data that is downloaded to CSV.

  • The costs and credits data in the report table is aggregated for the specified time range.

  • The report CSV includes header information that includes the Cloud Billing account name and the date range set on the report.

  • The report CSV includes the footer details that appear below the report table. The footer details might include invoice-level costs such as Tax and Adjustments if you have configured your report to show the invoice details.

View your forecasted costs

You can use the forecast feature to see how your costs are trending and how much you are projected to spend, up to 12 months in the future.

If you are viewing your Cloud Billing report using a date range that ends in a future date, your Cloud Billing report chart displays both actual costs and forecasted costs:

  • The summary bar above the chart provides a split view of cost: actual cost-to-date calculated from the starting date, and the total forecasted cost for the entire date range.
  • A cost trend line in the chart indicates the direction your forecast is trending.

Forecasted cost.

Forecasts are available for:

  • Any combination of filters (except for an Invoice month time range).
  • Any Usage date time range that ends with a future date. (Forecasts are not available for an Invoice month time range.)

    • If you are viewing the report for the Current month time range, the default end date is the last day of the current month.
    • If you choose to specify a custom time range, select Usage date, and configure a date range with the To: date set for a future date.

      You can see your forecasted spend up to 12 months in the future.

The cost trend is determined by:

  1. Analyzing all of your historical Google Cloud spend for the filters you have currently selected.
  2. Selecting the most relevant, recent subset of data to use in the predictive model. For example, if a recent application launch caused a sharp increase in usage, the history selection algorithm might only look at data from after the application launch.
  3. Generating a forecast that accounts for both your long term trend and any consistent monthly cycles such as sustained use discounts.

The total forecasted cost combines:

  • The total actual cost to date in the selected time period.
  • The predicted cost for each future day in the same time period.

The time range selected for the report does not affect what data is used to generate the cost trend and forecast. For example, if you are viewing a report for the current month, cost data from previous months is still used to fit the trend.

View your costs by project hierarchy

Viewing your costs by project hierarchy helps you analyze costs by folder or organization. For example, if you use folders in an organization to represent cost centers, you can effectively configure your report to group all costs by those cost centers.

To analyze your costs by project hierarchy, including costs by Organizations or costs by Folders, set the Group by option to Project hierarchy. You can also use the Folders & Organizations filter to select specific folders/organizations to focus the data returned in the report.

Shows report configured to group by project hierarchy.

About project and resource hierarchy

Projects form the basis for creating, enabling, and using all Google Cloud services. Folders are used to group projects under the organization node in a resource hierarchy. A folder can contain projects, other folders, or a combination of both. Each resource has exactly one parent.

Metaphorically speaking, the Google Cloud resource hierarchy resembles the file system found in traditional operating systems as a way of organizing and managing entities hierarchically. From a cost management perspective, you might use folders in an organization to represent cost centers (such as Devops or Finance). You can view your costs by project hierarchy to analyze your costs by folder.

Project hierarchy is the ancestry of a project, the resource hierarchy mapping of the project (Organization > Folder > Project). Projects can stand alone (that is, not be associated with any folders or organizations) or be the child of an Organization or Folder. Project hierarchy tracks the current and historical project ancestry. For example, changing a project's name, or moving a project to a different folder or organization, affects the historical project ancestry.

To gain a deeper understanding about resource hierarchy and Cloud Billing, refer to Cloud Billing concepts, Resource hierarchy .

Configure your report to show project hierarchy

To view your costs by project hierarchy (organization > folder > project), take the following steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open the Reports page for the Cloud Billing account you want to analyze.
  2. In the report Filters, set a Time range to use a starting date on or after January 1, 2022.
  3. In the Group by selector, choose Project hierarchy.

    The report returns a row for each unique combination of Organization > Folder > Project, and the table includes columns for Project, Project ID, Project number, and Project hierarchy.

    The values listed in the Project hierarchy column show Organization name > Folder name.

Analyze the report when grouped by Project hierarchy

  • You can sort the table data on different columns to view the project hierarchy costs in different ways:

    • To visualize all of the projects that have the same project hierarchy, sort the table by the Project hierarchy column.
    • To visualize if you have the same project associated with more than one ancestry, sort the table by the Project ID column.
  • You can narrow the report's project hierarchy results using the Folders & Organizations filter.

  • While you are viewing the report grouped by Project hierarchy, if you change the report's time range to include a starting date prior to January 1, 2022, the Group by selection is automatically updated to group by Project.

  • If you select some folders or organizations in the filter, and then update the time range to include a starting date prior to January 1, 2022, the folders/organizations selections are removed.

Understand and analyze changes in project ancestry

For the time range you are analyzing, it is possible for the same Project to be listed in more than one row in the report table. This can occur if something related to the project's ancestry has changed. Changes that affect a project's ancestry include the following:

  • Changing the project's name
  • Moving the project to a different organization and/or folder
  • Changing a parent folder's name
  • Moving a parent folder into another folder and/or organization

To visualize if you have projects associated with more than one ancestry, sort the table data by the Project ID column.

View project hierarchy examples showing different scenarios where something related to the project's ancestry was changed, and how that change impacts the results in the report, depending on how you Group the results.

View and analyze your credits

You can use the Credits filters to change the view of your cost calculations. You can select all applicable credits (default) to be included in the cost calculations, or you can uncheck some or all of the credit options to exclude credits from the cost calculations.

Illustrating the credits filter options in the reports page.

Usage-specific credits are listed in separate columns in the table, and impact the Subtotal value. There are two categories of usage-specific credits: Discounts and Promotions and others.

For Cloud Billing accounts associated with a custom pricing contract, when viewing your report by invoice month you can view your Negotiated savings as a credit column, separate from the cost at list price column.

Discount credits

Discount credits are recurring and considered an integral part of the final cost. Discounts reduce the cost of your Google Cloud usage. If applicable to your Cloud Billing account, there are various types of discount credits you might earn, such as the following:

  • Free tiers: Some services offer free resource usage up to specified limits. For these services, credits are applied to implement the free tier usage.
  • Sustained use discounts: Sustained use discounts are automatic discounts that you get for running specific Compute Engine resources a significant portion of the billing month.
  • Committed use discounts (resource based): Compute Engine offers the ability to purchase committed use contracts in return for deeply discounted prices for VM usage.
  • Committed use discounts (spend based): Spend-based committed use discounts provide a discount in exchange for your commitment to spend a minimum amount for a service in a particular region.
  • Spending based discounts (contractual): Discounts applied after a contractual spending threshold has been reached.
  • Subscriptions: Long term subscriptions to services that are purchased in exchange for discounts.
  • Reseller margin: For resellers only, this is the Reseller Program Discount credit earned on eligible items.

View the details of your committed use discounts (CUD)

Committed use discounts (CUDs) reduce the usage costs of Compute Engine and certain other Google Cloud services. The fees and credits from your purchased committed use discounts are applied to your Cloud Billing account using attribution, which describes how they're spread across the account's projects that consumed the eligible discounts. When analyzing your Google Cloud costs, it is useful to understand how your purchased commitments are impacting your costs. To understand how your commitment fees and credits are applied to your Cloud Billing account and projects, see Attribution of committed use discount fees and credits.

For example, to understand your ongoing Compute Engine costs, you need to know your VM core and RAM usage costs as well as the sustained use discounts and committed use discounts generated by your core and RAM usage.

Committed use discounts comprise three components using a balance sheet format for your bill:

  1. Commitment fee is the discounted cost of your covered usage.
  2. On-demand costs are the costs for the resources that you consume, billed at the standard list price.
  3. Committed use discount credits are negative costs that offset the eligible on-demand charges covered by the commitment.

The net impact of these three components is that you receive a discount on the usage covered by your commitment. The sum of your commitment fee (1) and committed use discount credits (3) equals the savings from your committed use discounts. For more information, see Understanding your invoice or statement.

  • To configure the report to display the individual components that comprise your committed use discounts, group your costs by SKU. The default report view (not grouped by SKU) does not break out the CUD components but instead includes the net of the three components.

  • To view only your ongoing commitment fees, limit the report results to the relevant commitment fee SKUs using the SKUs filter. For example, select the SKUs filter and type Commitment [YOUR COMMITMENT TYPE].

Depending on the product for which you purchased committed use discounts, the fees and credits are applied to your Cloud Billing account using either account attribution or proportional attribution. To understand how your commitment fees and credits are attributed to your Cloud Billing account and projects, see Attribution of committed use discounts.

Promotions and other credits

Promotions and other credits are typically one-time use and reduce the cost of your Google Cloud usage.

  • Promotions: Promotions are things like Google Cloud Free Trial and marketing campaign credits, or other grants to use Google Cloud. Promotional credits are typically considered a form of payment. When available, promotional credits are automatically applied to reduce your total bill.
  • Other: Any credits that do not fit into the discounts or promotional credits categories.

Tip: To understand your ongoing Google Cloud costs after your Google Cloud free trial expires, clear the Promotions checkbox.

  • Promotional credits for custom pricing contracts: If you have a custom pricing contract with Google Cloud, and received promotional credits that apply to costs at list prices, your report includes a service called Invoice, with a SKU called Contract billing adjustment. This SKU adjusts your promotional credits so that they apply to the costs at list price. View details about contract billing adjustments in the Cloud Billing data export.

    To check whether your promotional credits apply at list prices, refer to the terms of your contract.

Negotiated savings

Negotiated savings is a credit type available for Cloud Billing accounts that are associated with a custom pricing contract.

Negotiated savings represent the difference in costs calculated using list prices compared to the same costs calculated using your custom contract prices.

Negotiated savings = List price - Contract price

Depending on how you configure the report, you can include your negotiated savings in a single Cost column, or you can explicitly view the Negotiated savings credits in a separate column from the List cost column. List cost is your costs calculated using list prices, prior to applying negotiated savings or any other discounts or credits.

  • Prior to your May 2021 invoice month, or when viewing the report using a Usage date time range, your costs are calculated using your custom contract price, resulting in a single column for Cost that includes your negotiated savings credit:

    Example of a billing report for a Cloud Billing account
that is associated with a custom pricing contract, showing a single
column for cost that includes the negotiated savings.
    Example of a billing report for a Cloud Billing account that is associated with a custom pricing contract, configured using a Usage date time range.
  • Starting with your May 2021 invoice, you can configure your report to view the Negotiated savings as a credit column, separate from the List cost column. To view separate columns for List cost and Negotiated savings, configure your report by Invoice month. In the Time range section of the Filters panel, select Invoice month, and then set your From and To month range:

    Example of a billing report for a Cloud Billing account
that is associated with a custom pricing contract, showing Negotiated
savings as a credit column, separate from the List cost column that displays
base usage cost calculated using list prices.
    Example of a billing report for a Cloud Billing account that is associated with a custom pricing contract, configured using an Invoice month time range.

To see an overview of how much your usage-based credits are saving you on your invoice, view the Cost Breakdown report.

View a budget in your report

When you open the report from an existing budget, the report's filters are configured based on the scope of the budget, and you can view the budget's amount in your report. The budget's target amount appears in the report chart as a red, dashed, horizontal line, helping you to visualize the budget while you are analyzing the specific costs that are tracked by the budget.

You have these options to view a budget amount in a report:

  • View the cost report for the current month, with report filters matching your budget's scope.
  • View the cost report for the previous 12 months, with report filters matching your budget's scope.
View a budget in your cost report showing costs for the current month

To view a budget in your cost report for the current month, take the following steps:

  1. Go to the Budgets and alerts list page.
  2. To navigate to a cost report that is configured using the budget's scope settings, click the Spend and budget amount progress bar for the budget you want to analyze.
Example of the budget list page, showing several budgets and pointing
         to a progress bar in the Spend and budget amount column.
Example of the budget list page. Click image to view an enlarged version.

The cost report opens with the following settings:

  • The Time range option is set as Usage date, setting a custom range for the current month.
  • The Time aggregation setting in the report chart is set to Daily cumulative.
  • The Chart style is set to bar chart.
  • The Group by option defaults to Service.
  • The rest of the report filters are configured using the budget's scope settings, such as Projects, Services, Labels, and Credit selections.
  • A Budget amount line appears in the report chart, representing the target spend amount of the budget.
Example of a cost report opened from a budget. The report displays a
         budget amount line on the report chart.
Example of a cost report opened from a budget. Click image to view an enlarged version.
View a budget in your cost report showing costs for the previous 12 months

To view a budget in your cost report for the previous 12 months, take the following steps:

  1. Go to the Budgets and alerts list page.
  2. Access the budget scope by opening an existing budget.
  3. In the budget's cost trend chart, click the View report link to navigate to a cost report that is configured using the budget's scope settings.
Example of a budget's cost trend chart, viewable when creating or
         editing a budget, showing the link to navigate to the cost report
         page.
Example of a budget's cost trend chart. Click image to view an enlarged version.

The cost report opens with the following settings:

  • The Time range option is set as Usage date, selecting Custom range. The date range is set for the previous 12 months.
  • The Time aggregation setting in the report chart is set to Monthly.
  • The Chart style is set to bar chart.
  • The Group by option defaults to Service.
  • The rest of the report filters are configured using the budget's scope settings, such as Projects, Services, Labels, and Credit selections.
  • If you are navigating to the report from an existing budget, a Budget amount line appears in the report chart, representing the previously-saved target spend amount of the budget. If you navigate to the report while you are creating a budget, the budget amount line does not display in the cost report.
Example of a cost report opened from the cost trend chart of a budget.
         The report displays a budget amount line on the report chart.
Example of a cost report opened from the cost trend chart of a budget. Click image to view an enlarged version.

Analyze the report when the budget amount line is visible

The budget amount line is removed from the report if you adjust most of the report settings. However, you can adjust the following settings in the report and the budget amount line will remain visible.

  • Group by setting: You can switch the Group by setting to use any of the available options.
  • Chart style setting: You can switch the Chart style setting between bar chart and line chart.
  • Credits setting: You can select or clear the Credits filters to change the view of your cost calculations to include or exclude credits, helping you to visualize how credits impact the cost calculations compared to your budget target amount.

If you change any other report settings, the budget amount line is removed. These settings include the report's time range settings, the report chart time aggregation settings, and the report filters, including Subaccounts, Projects, Services, SKUs, Locations, and Labels.

To restore the budget amount line, re-open the report from a budget.

Understand the differences between budget scopes and report filters

Budget scopes and report filters behave a little differently. In each of the scopes in a budget, you can select from a list of all possible items available in a given scope. In each of the report filters, you can select from a list of items that have incurred usage costs in the Cloud Billing account you are viewing. This means that the items selectable in your budget scopes might not match up exactly to the items selectable in your cost report filters.

Review the following examples for more information:

Projects: budget scope versus cost report filter

For the Cloud Billing account, assume the following regarding projects:

  • 20 currently active projects incurring costs.
  • 10 inactive projects that had previously incurred costs.
  • This Cloud Billing account is also incurring charges that are not specific to a project, such as the cost of a support plan.
  • You have billing-account-level permissions to access the Cloud Billing account.
Budget Cost Report
On your budget, in your Projects scope, you can select from the 20 currently active projects. You cannot select inactive projects or select [Charges not specific to a project]. On the cost report, your Projects filter list includes all projects for which you have incurred usage costs, both active projects and inactive projects. Your Projects filter also includes the option to select and view [Charges not specific to a project].
On your budget, you set the Project scope to "All projects (20)" — where "20" indicates 20 active projects. When you open the cost report from the budget, the value in the report's Projects filter displays "All projects (31)" — where "31" indicates that you have 31 projects that have incurred costs in the Cloud Billing account you are viewing, including active and inactive projects, and [Charges not specific to a project].
When you open the cost report from the budget's cost trend chart, if your budget scope is set for all projects, and your Cloud Billing account is incurring charges not specific to a project, you might notice that your costs appear higher in the cost report than in the budget's cost trend chart.

Services: budget scope versus cost report filter

For the Cloud Billing account, assume the following regarding services:

  • There are 200 possible services or products that you could use.
  • The Cloud Billing account has incurred costs for 16 out of the 200 possible services.
Budget Cost Report
On your budget, in your Services scope, you can see and select from all 200 possible services, even if you have not yet incurred any usage or costs for those services. On the cost report, your Services filter list includes only those services or products for which you have incurred usage costs.
On your budget, you set the Services scope to "All services (200)" — where "200" indicates all possible services. When you open the cost report from the budget, the value in the report's Services filter displays "All services (16)" — where "16" indicates that you only have 16 services that have incurred costs in your Cloud Billing account.

View the charges on your invoices

You can change the report view to display charges by invoice month, including invoice-level charges (for example, taxes, contractual credits, adjustments, or surcharges). If you receive more than one invoice for a month, the report view aggregates all invoice costs for the invoice month. In Billing Reports, you cannot view the report by individual invoice.

If you want to view detailed costs per individual invoice, see the cost table report. Using the cost table report, you can view invoice costs by invoice number and download the report to CSV for offline analysis.

To view the cost report for the invoice month, in the Time range section of the Filters panel, select Invoice month, then set your From and To month range.

  • The Invoice level charges section (below the Credits section in the Filters panel) shows Tax and Adjustments by default.

  • The report summary, above the chart, displays taxes when Invoice month is selected.

Costs by invoice
 month, including invoice-level charges.

  • The summary footer, below the table, displays the cost breakdown based on your filter selections. Invoice-level charges (tax and adjustments) are NOT displayed when the Time range setting is by Usage date, or when you set other report filters (such as Projects, Services, or SKUs).

Footer summarizing
 your report costs based on your filter selections.

View invoice charges for the most recent invoice month

To view all invoice charges for the most recent invoice month, in the Filters panel, expand the Presets dropdown and select Last invoice month. This preset option automatically sets the report filters as follows:

  • In the Time range section in the filters panel, Invoice month is selected, and the From and To month range is set for the most recent complete invoice month (for example, February 2023).
  • The Group by filter is set to group costs by Service.
  • All other report filters are set to use their default configurations (for example, ALL projects, services, SKUs, credits, and so on).

Using the Last invoice month preset, you can quickly view a report with totals that map to your most recent invoice or statement, showing costs for all services and SKUs, grouped by Service, and including credits and invoice-level charges (such as taxes, contractual credits, adjustments, or surcharges).

Note that Billing Reports aggregates all invoice costs for the invoice month, and not by individual invoice. If you receive more than one invoice in a month, your invoice month totals might not map to the totals of an individual invoice issued in the same month. If you want to view detailed costs per individual invoice, see the cost table report.

View invoice charges for a specific invoice month

To view all invoice charges for a specific invoice month, do the following:

  1. In the Time range section in the filters panel, select Invoice month, then set your From and To month range for the same month (for example, January 2023).
  2. Select your preferred Group by setting (for example, Project, Service, or SKU).
  3. Ensure no other filters are set. That is, you should view the report for ALL projects, services, SKUs, credits, and so on.

    In the summary footer, the cost breakdown displays:

    • Subtotal: The sum of the Group by costs, after Promotions and Discounts.
    • Adjustments: The sum of credit or debit memos and other adjustments applied to your Cloud Billing account due to billing corrections, contractual requirements, and so on, as reported from the invoices issued for the invoice month. Adjustments might be issued in a different month than the invoice month to which they are applied. For more details on adjustments, see Understand memos and adjustments. (You won't see this line item if you have no adjustments applied to your invoices.)
    • Tax: Sum of all taxes reported from all of the invoices for the invoice month.
    • Invoice total: Includes all credits, adjustments, taxes, and rounding errors, aggregated for all invoices issued for the invoice month.

      Tip: Rounding errors are included in the Invoice total but are not listed as a separate line item. To view the exact rounding error sum, hover your pointer over the tooltip () next to Invoice total.

Invoice total versus Filtered total

In the summary footer of the report, the display of invoice-level costs and the type of report total depends on how your report filters are configured.

  • Invoice total: Invoice total includes all costs and credits for the invoice month, as well as invoice-level charges such as taxes, adjustments, and rounding errors, aggregated for all invoices issued during the invoice month. To view the invoice total, set the Time range to Invoice month, and ensure all of the other filters are set to show ALL options (such as all Projects, Services, SKUs, Credits, and so on).

    Example of a report footer showing an invoice total, which include
taxes and adjustments.

  • Filtered total: When your time range is set to invoice month, the filtered total summarizes your charges based on the filter selections you have chosen (such as filtering on a subset of Projects, Services, or SKUs), excluding tax, adjustments, and rounding errors. When you see a Filtered total in the report, invoice-level charges are not displayed in the summary footer and are not included in the calculation of the filtered total. A filtered total does not match the total on your monthly invoice or statement.

    Example of a report footer showing a filtered total. When any report
filter is set, invoice-level charges are not included in the amount of the
filtered total.

  • Cost Table report: A detailed, tabular view of your monthly costs for a given invoice or statement, which can be filtered and downloaded.
  • Cost Breakdown report: An at-a-glance waterfall view of your monthly costs calculated using the on-demand price for your Google Cloud usage, how credits saved you money on your invoice, and any invoice-level charges applied (if you are viewing the cost breakdown for an invoice month time range).

Data availability

The data availability information in this section applies to customers who are accessing a Cloud Billing account using billing-account-level permissions. If your access to a billing account is limited to project-level permissions, you might not be able to view all available cost data or report configuration options for a Cloud Billing account.

  • In Cloud Billing reports, usage cost data is available back to January 2017 at the SKU level.
  • Cost data viewed by invoice month is available back to May 2019 at the SKU level.
  • Data at the sub-SKU level (for example, by resource ID) is not currently available.

As of January 2017, the following data is included in Cloud Billing reports:

  • SKU usage: This is reported in the pricing units shown on the pricing table report, for example, gibibyte month.

  • SKU cost: The SKU cost is based on the list price or custom contract price for that usage, whichever price is applicable to your Cloud Billing account. It is reported in the currency that your Cloud Billing account is charged in.

  • Usage-specific credits: This includes any credits or discounts that were applied directly to the SKU usage such as sustained use discounts, committed use discounts, or free trial and other promotional credits that were applied.

  • Location data: This includes costs incurred by region or multi-region.

As of May 2019, the following data is available in the Cloud Billing reports:

  • Taxes: Taxes that were applied to your invoices are reported by Invoice month(s) selected.

  • Account-level billing modifications: Sum of credits or surcharges applied at the account level due to Cloud Billing corrections, contractual requirements, and so on. Reported as Adjustments when viewing reports by Invoice month(s). The month that an adjustment is issued might differ from the month when the adjustment is applied. For guidance on how to analyze adjustments, see Understand memos and adjustments.

  • Invoice details: You can graph or group usage by invoice month(s). Note: We do not display the invoice number in this report view.

When viewing costs by invoice month, the following data is available in the Cloud Billing reports:

Invoices generally include all costs incurred during a given calendar month, but the cost for some services' usage at the very end of a calendar month might roll over to the next month's invoice. As a result, your invoice might include costs for more than one calendar month. Usage is reported by actual usage date when viewing your invoice details and online reports.

Other data specific to an invoice includes the totals of any taxes and adjustments.

As of May 2021, the following data is available in the Cloud Billing reports:

  • Negotiated savings: Viewable for Cloud Billing accounts that are associated with a custom pricing contract, Negotiated savings shows the difference in cost between your contract price compared to the current list price. The Negotiated savings column is displayed when viewing your report by Invoice month, starting with the May 2021 invoice.

    Prior to May 2021, or when viewing the report using a Usage date time range, your costs are calculated using your custom contract price, resulting in a single column for Cost that includes your Negotiated savings.

As of January 1, 2022, the following data is available in the Cloud Billing reports:

  • Project hierarchy: Project hierarchy is the project's ancestry, the resource hierarchy mapping of a project (Organization > Folder > Project). When viewing your report with a starting time range of January 1, 2022, you can group your data by Project hierarchy.
  • Folders & Organizations: Folders and organizations are components of a project hierarchy. When viewing your report with a starting time range of January 1, 2022, you can filter your data by folders and/or organizations.

FAQs

How do I get access to the granular data behind Cloud Billing reports?

You can configure your Cloud Billing account to export data to BigQuery and then use BigQuery or your own tools to analyze the exported cost line items. For example, you can visualize your costs with Looker Studio, or from your BigQuery tables, you can choose to export your BigQuery data as CSV (or other formats) to a Cloud Storage bucket. The Cloud Billing data exported to BigQuery is the same data that your Cloud Billing reports use.

Can I save or share my Cloud Billing report view?

Multiple options are available.

  • Save a report view: You can save customized report views using the Saved views feature. Saved views are available in the Reports page and are accessible to anyone who has Cloud Billing account-level access to view billing reports.
  • Share a report: You can Share a report by copying and sharing the URL of your customized Cloud Billing report.
  • Bookmark a report: You can save a customized Cloud Billing report view to be accessible in your browser by bookmarking the report URL. The URL includes the report settings you selected.

  • Print a report: You can Print the Cloud Billing report.

  • Download report CSV: You can download the report data to a CSV file using the Download CSV selector at the top, right of the summary table.

  • Create a custom report: You can recreate the report using queries of your exported Cloud Billing data.

How do I filter or group costs by zone, region, or multi-region?

You can group your costs by region or multi-region, and you can filter on locations (regions and multi-regions). The Cloud Billing reports currently do not support filtering or grouping by zone.

Why are my usage date costs different than my invoice month costs?

Google Cloud products report usage and cost data to Cloud Billing processes at varying intervals. As a result, you might see a delay between your use of Google Cloud services, and the usage and costs being available to view in Cloud Billing. Typically, your costs are available within a day, but can sometimes take more than 24 hours.

At the end of a calendar month, late-reported usage might not be included on that month's invoice and instead might roll over to the next month's invoice.

When you view your online reports, usage is shown by the actual usage date, which might be different from the invoice month.