This is a general FAQ about changes to infrastructure services and pricing for Google Cloud. We plan to update this FAQ regularly, so please check back for the latest information.
Important note: Customers under existing contracts as of October 1, 2022 with a floating or fixed discount will remain unaffected by the changes until their contract renewal. However, we want to provide information to support our customers who may have questions about the new offerings and pricing.
Based on feedback from our customers, we are implementing the changes in two parts over a six-month period. On October 1, 2022, we updated our pricing as previously planned for new products / SKUs in the areas of Cloud Storage, Load Balancing, and Cloud Ops Monitoring.
On April 1, 2023, we implemented pricing updates on existing products in these areas as well as Persistent Disk SKU and pricing changes, having given customers nearly an additional six months to prepare for these changes.
This change impacts both existing and new products, but at different timeframes. Take a moment to review the announcements for each product below:
a. Persistent Disk snapshot pricing changes
b. Cloud Storage pricing changes
Take a few steps to review your current usage for Google Cloud products.
1. On September 15, 2022, we sent an email containing our latest updates on these pricing changes. Look for the subject line: [Billing Notice] Reminder about upcoming price changes to some of your Google Cloud services.
a. If you have the email: An estimate for your current usage will be attached. This estimate includes existing SKUs and the new SKUs that we introduced.
b. If you can’t find the email: You can still estimate your costs for existing SKUs that are changing in price. You can also access usage information for new SKUs in your billing report, including SKUs launched on Oct. 1, 2022.
i. View which SKUs are changing for the product you are interested in.
c. For existing Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk, and Load Balancing SKUs
d. For Cloud Ops Monitoring
Once you have identified which products you are using, and calculated new cost estimates for any SKUs you are using, you can then prepare for these changes for Persistent Disk, Cloud Storage, and Load Balancing following the steps below:
a. For Persistent Disk snapshots, look at each application using snapshots to see if the move to the new archive class option makes sense for your organization. The new snapshots are managed consistently with the current snapshot, so changing the configuration to use the new tier for future snapshots is straightforward. If your snapshots are retained for 90 days or longer, and if they are rarely accessed, we recommend creating Archive Snapshots. If you don’t require the additional replication and resilience of multi-regional snapshots, we recommend using regional Snapshots by specifying a regional location when snapshots are created. Read about storage options.
b. For Cloud Storage, Read about Location considerations.
c. For Load Balancing, decide if Cloud CDN or Google Cloud Armor will help to reduce data processed for your specific needs. Read about steps you can take to reduce outbound load balancer data.
d. For Cloud Ops Monitoring,
Over the past several years, we’ve made significant investments in infrastructure services that have benefited our customers. Many of these changes have added capabilities for new use cases and applications—such as new flexible options in Cloud Storage, data mobility, Persistent Disk snapshots, network load balancing, and part of the Network Intelligence Center.
As we continue to add these capabilities, we are also making adjustments to certain products' pricing models to address customer feedback on how they want to purchase our services. As more companies move to a multicloud approach, we believe this approach can make it easier for customers to manage payments across multiple providers and streamline their procurement.
Google Cloud offers innovative solutions to transform businesses, priced in a customer-focused and consistent way. With our pay-as-you-go pricing structure, customers have the ability to better match costs to the services they use. Customers can also more easily compare services between leading cloud providers.
We are changing our offerings (and, in some cases, prices) for certain Google Cloud infrastructure services. These changes include services in Cloud Storage, Networking, Security, Cloud Monitoring, and the Persistent Disk offering that is part of our Compute service. The changes can provide customers with new ways to optimize their spending based on workload type and size, as well as their data portability needs. They also enable customers to reduce prices on some services. A high-level summary of the changes include:
Customers can adapt their current usage to better align their applications to these new business models and help mitigate some of the price changes. They should consider what actions, if any, they may want to take based on current storage, networking, and compute needs. Many of these changes may have simple choices associated with them.
As Google Cloud has grown, we’ve learned that customers are looking to build their infrastructure with products that provide flexibility to meet performance, cost, and availability needs. With these changes, we are introducing new ways for customers to customize product options to meet their use case needs. For some products, these new ways may mean adding new features or granular controls. For other products, the new options may mean changing how we bill for its usage.
We’re introducing new flexibility in the following areas:
The initial services and pricing updates went into effect on October 1, 2022. Mandatory Service Announcements (MSAs) were sent to customers on March 14, 2022, providing customers with more than 180 days notice before the changes take effect. Customers who signed or renewed a commit contract with a fixed or floating discount before October 1, 2022, are not impacted by the price changes until the end of their contracts. We sent a MSA Addendum on September 15, 2022 that revised the date for some of the changes (including price changes to existing SKUs and Persistent Disk SKU and price changes) to April 1, 2023, giving customers and partners nearly an additional six months to prepare for these changes.
We will honor the commitments we make to our customers, so those with existing commit contracts as of October 1, 2022 will not be impacted by these changes until the end of their contracts. Please contact your sales rep to understand what changes may occur.
Many of the changes have fairly simple choices associated with them. For example, for Persistent Disk snapshots, customers can look at each application using snapshots to see if the move to the new archive class option makes sense. The new snapshots are managed consistently with the current snapshot, so changes to the configuration to use the new tier for future snapshots can be relatively straightforward. Read about the options for Persistent Disk pricing.
More mitigation options generally exist in the changes being made to Cloud Storage, where customers may need to decide if sticking with current multi-regional storage buckets, or moving them to a regional or dual-region location, makes more sense. Read about the options that are available for storage.
Google Cloud is also changing how customers are charged for Load Balancing offerings and introducing new charges for outbound data processing. And we are also simplifying and/or reducing SKUs for five networking products to improve the customer billing experience. Read more about the options available for Load Balancing.
Customers were notified by a Mandatory Service Announcement (MSA), which was sent on March 14, 2022. An updated MSA Addendum was sent on September 15, 2022.
The changes will apply globally. For any pricing changes, local currency list prices will be adjusted to USD prices to help avoid currency arbitrage.
In addition to this FAQ, you can reference the blog post about these changes: Updates to Google Cloud’s infrastructure capabilities and pricing
We plan to update this FAQ regularly with more information. However, If you have any additional questions that are not answered in this FAQ, please reach out to your Google Specialist.
*Note: This pricing analysis is valid as of February 2022