VM instance pricing

This page describes the cost of running a Compute Engine VM instance with any of the following machine types, as well as other VM instance-related pricing. To see the pricing for other Google Cloud products, see the Google Cloud pricing list.

Compute Engine charges for usage based on the following price sheet. A bill is sent out at the end of each billing cycle, providing a sum of Google Cloud charges. Prices on this page are listed in U.S. dollars (USD).

For Compute Engine, disk size, machine type memory, and network usage are calculated in gigabytes (GB), where 1 GB is 2³⁰ bytes. This unit of measurement is also known as a gibibyte (GiB).

If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply.

You can also find pricing information with the following options:

See the estimated costs of your instances and Compute Engine resources when you create them in the Google Cloud console.
Estimate your total project costs with the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator.
View and download prices from the Pricing Table in the Google Cloud console.
View more information about costs and usage in Cloud Billing reports.
Use the Cloud Billing Catalog API for programmatic access to SKU information.

Billing model

The following billing model applies to all vCPUs, GPUs, and memory resources. The billing model also applies to several premium images that you run on Compute Engine instances.

All vCPUs, GPUs, and GB of memory are charged a minimum of 1 minute. For example, if you run your virtual machine for 30 seconds, you will be billed for 1 minute of usage.
After 1 minute, instances are charged in 1 second increments.

Instance uptime

Instance uptime is measured as the number of seconds between when you start an instance and when you stop an instance, the latter being when the instance state is TERMINATED. In some cases, your instance can suffer from a failure and be marked as TERMINATED by the system; in these cases, you will not be charged for usage after the instance reaches the TERMINATED state. If an instance is idle, but still has a state of RUNNING, it will be charged for instance uptime. The easiest way to determine the status of an instance is to use gcloud compute with the gcloud compute instances list command or to visit the Google Cloud console.

In the case of reservations, instance uptime is measured as the number of seconds between when you create a reservation and when you delete that reservation. Reserved resources are billed at standard rates, whether they are started or not.

Note that Compute Engine bills for a minimum of 1 minute of usage, so if you use an instance for 30 seconds of uptime, you are billed for 1 minute. After 1 minute, your instance is billed on a per-second basis. For more information, see the billing model.

Resource-based pricing

Each vCPU and each GB of memory on Compute Engine is billed separately rather than as part of a single machine type. You still create instances using predefined machine types, but your bill reports them as individual vCPUs and memory used per hour. If you change the number of threads per core, you are billed for the number of vCPUs defined by a VM's machine type, not the number of threads used by the VM.

The pricing tables in the machine family and machine type sections on this page describe prices for machine types based on vCPU and memory resources, but also include the calculated cost for each machine type. You can also use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator to better understand prices for different configurations.

Discounts

vCPU and memory usage for each machine type use the on-demand price unless that usage qualifies for a discount. vCPU and memory usage for each machine type can receive one of the following discounts:

Discounts for Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs): automatic discount between 60-91%. Spot prices change over time, but the discounts for machine types are always in this range.
Committed use discounts (CUDs): up to a 70% discount for memory-optimized machine types and up to a 57% discount for all other machine types.
Sustained use discounts (SUDs): automatic discount of up to 30% on resources that are used for more than 25% of a month and are not receiving any other discounts.

Discount types cannot be combined. Spot prices apply to all Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs), so Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs) cannot receive sustained use discounts or CUDs.

Committed use discounts

Compute Engine offers resources at deeply discounted prices in return for purchasing committed use contracts (also known as commitments). When you purchase a commitment, you commit either to a minimum amount of resource usage or to a minimum spend amount for a specified term of one or three years.

Depending on your resource usage requirements, you can purchase 1-year or 3-year commitments and receive CUDs for Compute Engine resources in either of the following ways:

Resource-based committed use discounts: You receive these CUDs when you purchase a resource-based commitment and commit to use a minimum level of Compute Engine resources in a particular region.
Compute Engine flexible committed use discounts You avail flexible CUDs when you purchase a spend-based (or flexible) commitment for Compute Engine and commit to a minimum amount of hourly spend.

Resource-based CUDs

Compute Engine offers a flat committed use discount percentage on its VMs across all regions. When you purchase vCPUs and/or memory on a 1-year commitment, you get the resources at a discount of 37% over the on-demand prices. When you purchase your resources on a 3-year commitment, the discount increases to 70% over the on-demand prices for memory-optimized machine types and to 57% over the on-demand prices for all other machine types.

Resource-based CUDs are available for the following machine types in each machine family:

General purpose:
- All general purpose machine types except for N1 shared-core machine types
- All N1, N2, and N2D sole-tenant node types
Memory-optimized:
- All M1 and M2 machine types
- All M1 and M2 sole-tenant node types
Compute-optimized:
- All C2 and C2D machine types
- All C2 sole-tenant node types
Accelerator-optimized:
- All A2 and G2 machine types
- All G2 sole-tenant node types

For a more detailed breakdown, see Commitment types.

Pricing for resource-based commitments

After you purchase a resource-based commitment, you're billed monthly for your commitment and must pay your monthly commitment fee even if you don't use all of your committed resources. Your commitment fee is the sum of the discounted prices of all your committed resources. Compute Engine calculates the discounted price of each resource by using its prevailing on-demand price on the day your commitment becomes active. Your monthly commitment fee and the discounted prices for your resources stay the same until the end of your commitment term, even if the on-demand prices change.

Combining resource-based CUDs with reservations

A commitment provides a 1- or 3-year discounted price agreement, but it does not reserve capacity in a specific zone. A reservation ensures that capacity is held in a specific zone even if the reserved VMs are not running. By attaching reservations to a commitment, you can get discounted, reserved resources

See Attach reservations to commitments for more information.

To learn how to purchase resource-based commitments, see the following:

Compute Engine Flexible CUDs

Flexible CUDs are spend-based CUDs that you receive when you commit to a minimum amount of hourly spend. When you purchase a flexible commitment for your Cloud Billing account, you commit to a minimum amount of hourly spend on Compute Engine vCPUs and/or memory for a 1-year or 3-year term. You do this by committing to spend on resources that are worth a specified minimum amount of on-demand price, every hour, throughout the commitment term. In return for committing to an hourly spend amount, you receive the following discounts:

A 28% discount over your committed hourly spend amount for a 1-year commitment
A 46% discount over your committed hourly spend amount for a 3-year commitment

The discounted hourly spend amount becomes your commitment fee and you are billed this fee monthly. Your commitment fee remains your minimum hourly expenditure throughout the commitment term and you have to pay it even if you don't use resources whose on-demand prices total up to your committed hourly spend.

You can purchase flexible commitments only for vCPUs and/or memory for the following machine types:

General purpose: All N1, N2, C3, E2, and N2D general purpose machine types
Compute-optimized: All C2 and C2D machine types

To view the full list of Compute Engine SKUs that are eligible for flexible CUDs, see Compute Engine flexible CUDs eligible SKUs.

To learn more about flexible CUDs, see Flexible CUDs

To learn how to purchase spend-based commitments, see Purchasing spend-based commitments

To learn how to view, analyze, and manage your spend-based commitments, see Analyze the effectiveness of flexible commitments.

Sustained use discounts

Compute Engine offers automatic discounts for sustained use of vCPUs and memory that are not receiving any other discounts. Whenever you use an applicable vCPU or an applicable GB of memory for more than 25% of a month, Compute Engine automatically gives you sustained use discount for every incremental hour that you continue to use that resource. The discount increases with usage and you can get up to a 30% net discount off of the vCPU and memory cost for instances that run the entire month.

Compute Engine automatically calculates and applies SUDs to resource usage within a Cloud Billing account, so there is no action required on your part to enable these discounts.

At the end of every month, based on the duration of time for which you use a resource, Compute Engine calculates the SUDs for that resource as credits. These credits show up as negative costs on your cost table report and Compute Engine always automatically uses these credits to offset your monthly resource usage costs. Any credits that you receive for your SUDs have no cash value. You can't store or use these credits beyond the month in which you receive them.

To learn more about sustained use discounts, see the Sustained Use Discounts documentation.

You can view all your earned credits during a particular month in the cost table report for your Cloud Billing account on the Google Cloud console. For more information, see View and download the cost details of your invoice or statement.

Order of discount application

Discount types cannot be combined. Spot prices apply to all Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs), so Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs) cannot receive committed use discounts or sustained use discounts.

For CUDs, Compute Engine first applies all the resource-based CUDs to any eligible hourly usage. After all the resource-based CUDs are applied, Compute Engine applies the available flexible CUDs to further eligible resource usage. Any hourly usage overage or usage that is not covered by your commitments is charged based on the on-demand rates and is eligible for any applicable sustained use discounts. At any given point, a resource is only eligible for only one kind of discount.

The pricing tables in the machine family and machine type sections on this page compare the on-demand prices for machine types in each machine family with the discounted prices for each of the following:

Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs)
1-year resource-based commitments
3-year resource-based commitments
1-year flexible CUD consumption rates
3-year flexible CUD consumption rates

Viewing usage

The Google Cloud console provides a transaction history for each of your projects. This history describes your current balance and estimated resource usage for that particular project.

To view a project's transaction history, go to the estimated billing invoice page.

General-purpose machine type family

General-purpose machine-types offer predefined and custom machine types in each region. Predefined machine types have a preset number of vCPUs and amount of memory, but are billed using the resource-based pricing model. Custom machine types are billed according to the resource-based pricing.

For N1, N2, and C2 machine types, Compute Engine provides automatic sustained use discounts for all of the predefined vCPU and memory resources that you use in a region. Sustained use discounts for predefined machine types are calculated separately from custom, memory-optimized, compute-optimized, and shared-core machine types. Depending on the machine type, sustained use discounts differ between N1 and N2 machine types:

N1 machine types can receive a sustained use discount up to 30%.
N2 machine types can receive a sustained use discount up to 20%.

E2 machine types do not offer sustained use discounts but provide larger savings directly through the on-demand and committed-use prices. E2 machine types provide consistently predictable pricing without the requirement to run a VM for a specific portion of the month.

For more information, see Sustained use discounts.

Not all machine types are guaranteed to be available in all zones all the time. To ensure that a machine type is available when you need it, you can preemptively reserve the machine type in a certain zone. For information about reserving predefined machine types in a specific zone, see Reservations of Compute Engine zonal resources.

C3 machine types

If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply.
^*Spot prices are dynamic and can change up to once every 30 days, but always provide discounts of 60-91% off of the corresponding on-demand price for machine types and GPUs. Spot prices also provide smaller discounts for local SSDs. For more information, see the Spot VMs documentation.

C3 standard machine types

C3 high-memory machine types

C3 high-CPU machine types

E2 machine types

E2 machine types are also available as shared-core VMs. For pricing information about E2 shared-core machine types, see E2 shared-core machine types.

E2 standard machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for standard predefined machine types in the E2 machine family. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

Standard machine types have 4 GB of memory per vCPU.

E2 high-memory machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for the E2 high-memory predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-memory machine types have 8 GB of memory per vCPU. High-memory instances are ideal for tasks that require more memory relative to virtual CPUs.

E2 high-CPU machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for E2 high-CPU predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-CPU machine types have one vCPU for every 1 GB of memory. High-CPU machine types are ideal for tasks that require moderate memory configurations for the needed vCPU count.

E2 custom vCPUs and memory

Custom machine types let you set a specific number of vCPUs and GB of memory for your instances to match the needs of your workload. Custom machine types save you the cost of running on a larger and more expensive machine type if your application does not require all of the resources provided by that machine type.

Read Creating a VM instance with a custom machine type to learn how to use these machine types.

The on-demand prices for custom machine types include a 5% premium over the on-demand prices for standard machine types. For an accurate estimate of your billing with custom machine types, use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator.

N2 machine types

N2 standard machine types

The following table shows the calculated costs for standard predefined machine types in the N2 machine family. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

Standard machine types have 4 GB of memory per vCPU.

N2 high-memory machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for the N2 high-memory predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-memory machine types have 8 GB of memory per vCPU. High-memory instances are ideal for tasks that require more memory relative to virtual CPUs.

N2 high-CPU machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for N2 high-CPU predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-CPU machine types have one vCPU for every 1 GB of memory. High-CPU machine types are ideal for tasks that require moderate memory configurations for the needed vCPU count.

N2 custom vCPUs and memory

Read Creating a VM instance with a custom machine type to learn how to use these machine types.

Sustained use discounts for custom machine types are calculated separately from predefined machine types, memory-optimized types, and shared-core machine types.

N2 extended custom memory

For custom machine types, any memory up to and including 8 GB of memory per vCPU is charged at the standard custom vCPU and memory pricing rate. Any memory above 8 GB per vCPU is charged according to the following extended memory prices. To learn how to create instances with custom machine types and extended memory, see Adding extended memory to a machine type.

N2D machine types

N2D standard machine types

The following table shows the calculated costs for standard predefined machine types in the N2D machine family. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

Standard machine types have 4 GB of memory per vCPU.

N2D high-memory machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for the N2D high-memory predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-memory machine types have 8 GB of memory per vCPU. High-memory instances are ideal for tasks that require more memory relative to virtual CPUs.

N2D high-CPU machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for the N2D high-cpu predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-cpu machine types have 1 GB of memory per vCPU. High-cpu instances are ideal for tasks that require more virtual CPUs relative to memory.

N2D custom vCPUs and memory

Read Creating a VM instance with a custom machine type to learn how to use these machine types.

Sustained use discounts for custom machine types are calculated separately from predefined machine types, memory-optimized types, and shared-core machine types.

N2D extended custom memory

Tau T2D machine types

If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply.

Tau T2D standard machine types

The following table shows the calculated costs for standard predefined machine types in the Tau T2D machine family. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

Standard machine types have 4 GB of memory per vCPU.

If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply.

Tau T2A machine types

If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply.

Tau T2A standard machine types

The following table shows the calculated costs for standard predefined machine types in the Tau T2A machine family. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

Standard machine types have 4 GB of memory per vCPU.

If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply.

N1 machine types

N1 standard machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for standard predefined machine types in the N1 machine family. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

Standard machine types have 3.75 GB of memory per vCPU.

N1 high-memory machine types

The following table shows the calculated cost for the N1 high-memory predefined machine types. The vCPUs and memory from each of these machine types are billed by their individual predefined vCPU and memory prices, but these tables provide the cost that you can expect using a specific machine type.

High-memory machine types have 6.5 GB of memory per vCPU. High-memory instances are ideal for tasks that require more memory relative to virtual CPUs.