Try out Cloud Spanner databases at no cost with new free trial instances

We are excited to announce Cloud Spanner free trial instances to give everyone an opportunity to try out Spanner at no cost for 90 days. Spanner is a fully managed relational database created by Google that provides the highest levels of consistency and availability at any scale. Developers love Spanner for its ease of use and its ability to automatically handle replication, sharding, disaster recovery, and strongly consistent transaction processing. Organizations across industries including finance, retail, gaming, and healthcare are using Spanner to modernize their tech stack, transform the end user experience, and innovate quickly to uncover new possibilities. Now any developer or organization can try Spanner hands-on at no cost with the Spanner free trial instance. Watch this short video to learn more about the Spanner free trial and get started today.

The Spanner free trial provides a Spanner instance where users can create GoogleSQL or PostgreSQL-dialect databases, explore Spanner capabilities, and prototype an application to run on Spanner. To make it easier for developers to evaluate Spanner, the free trial instance comes with built-in guided tutorials in the Google Cloud console. These tutorials provide step-by-step guidance to create a database, load predefined schema and data, and run sample queries and transactions so that users can quickly get started with Spanner and learn key concepts. 

Making Spanner more accessible for every developer and workload 

Our mission is to make Spanner’s unique benefits accessible to every developer and organization. So, we are making it easier, faster, and cost effective for everyone to use Spanner for applications big and small. 

We launched the PostgreSQL interface for Spanner so that users can build transformative applications with the fully managed experience of Spanner while using the familiar PostgreSQL dialect. We introduced Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) that give up to 40% discount to help users reduce their database costs. We also reduced the cost of entry for production workloads with granular instance sizing to make enterprise-grade production-ready databases available starting at approximately $65 per month. Users can even lower the cost to $40 per month by combining granular instance sizing and committed use discounts! With the launch of the Spanner free trial instance, users now have the opportunity to explore its capabilities without any upfront costs. Further, we make it easy for users to seamlessly upgrade from the free trial instance to a paid instance and scale without requiring any re-architecture and downtime. 

Get started with Spanner free trial in minutes

Both existing and new Google Cloud users are eligible for the Spanner free trial. If you are an existing Google Cloud user (i.e. if you have an active Google Cloud Billing account), you are ready to create your Spanner free trial instance. If you are a new Google Cloud user, you need to create a Cloud Billing account first that gives you eligibility to create a Spanner free trial instance as well as receive $300 in free credits to use on one or a combination of Google Cloud products. Note that Spanner free trial instance is in addition to the $300 free credits for new Google Cloud users. So, you won’t be spending those credits for using Spanner free trial instance. A billing account is required for verification of identity. Don’t worry, you are not charged until you choose to upgrade your Spanner free trial instance.

Getting started takes just a few steps: you can create a free trial instance using Google Cloud console or the gcloud CLI.

Using the Google Cloud Console, click “Start a free trial”, and simply enter the name and select the region of your free trial instance. A Spanner instance represents the resource in which you can create your databases while the region represents the geographic location where your databases are stored and replicated. Free trial instances are available in selected regions in the US, Europe, and Asia. If you prefer different regions or a multi-region configuration, create a paid Spanner instance instead.

Once you create your free trial instance, you can start using Spanner by launching a step-by-step tutorial in the console that provides guidance on database creation and schema design. Tutorials also help you understand the salient features of Spanner such as interleaved tables and secondary indexes that help in realizing the true power of Spanner.

Free trial instances are meant for learning and exploring Spanner. They are limited to a 10 GB storage capacity and a 90-day trial duration. Spanner Service Level Agreement (SLA) doesn’t apply to your free trial instances. Once you familiarize yourself with Spanner using the free trial, you can seamlessly upgrade the free trial instance to a paid instance with SLA guarantees to continue with your proof of concept, or to run your production workload. Furthermore, upgrading your free trial instance gives you the full benefits of Spanner such as creating multi-region configurations and scaling without limits. 

Get started

It has never been easier to try out Spanner. With the free trial instance, you can try out Spanner at no cost for 90 days. You can even prototype an entire application for free on Google Cloud by using the Spanner free trial along with the free tier offered by other Google Cloud products such as Compute Engine and BigQuery.  

• Create a 90-day Spanner free trial instance. Try Spanner free . 

• Take a deep dive into the new trial experience and learn more about how Spanner provides unlimited scale and up to 99.999% availability.