Containers & Kubernetes

Flexible committed-use discounts are now even more flexible

July 15, 2024

William Denniss

Group Product Manager, Google Kubernetes Engine

Yasmin Mowafy

Product Manager, Google Compute Engine

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Google Cloud offers many great ways to run your workloads: low-level VMs in Google Compute Engine, container orchestration with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) — including via fully-managed Autopilot mode — and Cloud Run. Until now, to optimize your spend, you needed to purchase several Committed-use Discounts (CUDs) to cover each of these different products. For example, you might have purchased a Compute Engine Flexible CUD for VM spend including workloads running on GKE’s standard mode, a Cloud Run CUD for Cloud Run always-on instances, and an Autopilot CUD for workloads running in GKE Autopilot.

Expanding Compute Flexible CUDs

Today we are excited to announce that the Compute Engine Flexible CUD, now known as the Compute Flexible CUD, has been expanded to cover Cloud Run on-demand resources, most GKE Autopilot Pods and the premiums for Autopilot Performance and Accelerator compute classes. The documentation and our SKU list has the precise details on what’s included.

With one CUD purchase, you can cover eligible spend on all three products: Compute Engine, GKE, and Cloud Run. You can save 46% for a three-year commitment, and 28% for one-year commitments. With this single unified CUD, you can now make a single commitment and spend it across all these products, maximizing its flexibility. Furthermore, these commitments are not region-specific, so you can use them on resources in any region across these products.

Retiring the Autopilot CUD

Since the new expanded Compute Flexible CUD has a higher discount than the GKE Autopilot CUD and greater overall flexibility, we’re retiring the GKE Autopilot CUD. You can still purchase the legacy GKE Autopilot CUD until October 15, after which it will no longer be available for purchase. Any existing CUDs will continue to apply through their term regardless of when you purchase them. That said, we recommend looking into the newly expanded Compute Flexible CUD for your needs now and in the future, for its greater flexibility and better discounts!

How to get started

If you're already using Flexible CUDs for Compute Engine, you'll automatically see the discounts applied to eligible Cloud Run and GKE Autopilot usage (if you have product-specific CUDs like the legacy GKE Autopilot CUD, those will apply first). If you're new to Compute Flexible CUD, it's easy to get started: estimate your hourly spend across eligible SKUs, and purchase a commitment that matches your expected sustained usage over the one- or three-year term, and start enjoying the savings! You can add additional CUDs as your usage grows.