Google Kubernetes Engine pricing
This page explains pricing for edition, compute resources, cluster operation mode, cluster management fees, and applicable ingress fees in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
Standard edition
Includes fully automated cluster lifecycle management, pod and cluster autoscaling, cost visibility and automated infrastructure cost optimization. Priced at $0.10 per cluster per hour.
Enterprise edition
Includes standard edition features and multi-team, multi-cluster, self-service operations, advanced security, service mesh, configuration, best practice observability metrics, and a unified console experience. Priced at $0.00822 per vCPU per hour.
Enabling GKE Enterprise in your project entitles you to full usage of the GKE Enterprise platform, including hybrid and multi-cloud features. Once enabled, GKE Enterprise charges apply to all GKE Enterprise clusters and are based on the number of GKE Enterprise cluster vCPUs, charged on an hourly basis. A vCPU is considered "under management" by GKE Enterprise when it is seen as schedulable compute capacity by the GKE Enterprise control plane, meaning all vCPUs in the relevant user cluster, and excluding (for on-premises options) both the admin cluster and the control plane nodes. For details of available GKE Enterprise features in each environment see the deployment options guide.
If you use Autopilot clusters with GKE Enterprise, you're billed per vCPU for the Enterprise tier in addition to the pricing model described in Autopilot pricing.
Pricing table
GKE Enterprise offers pay-as-you-go pricing, where you are billed for GKE Enterprise clusters as you use them at the rates listed below. You can start using pay-as-you-go GKE Enterprise whenever you like by following the instructions in our setup guides.
Prices are listed in U.S. dollars (USD). If you pay in a currency other than USD, the prices listed in your currency on Cloud Platform SKUs apply. A bill is sent out at the end of each billing cycle, listing previous usage and charges.
| Public Cloud Environments | Pay-as-you-goList Price (hourly) | Pay-as-you-go ListPrice (monthly) M |
|---|---|---|
| GKE Enterprise GC | $0.00822 /vCPU | $6 / vCPU |
| GKE Enterprise Multicloud (AWS) AWS | $0.00822 /vCPU | $6 / vCPU |
| GKE Enterprise Multicloud (Azure) AZ | $0.00822 /vCPU | $6 / vCPU |
| GKE Enterprise Multicloud (Attached Clusters) AC | $0.00822 /vCPU | $6 / vCPU |
| On-premises Environments | Pay-as-you-go (hourly) | Pay-as-you-go (monthly)Price (monthly) M |
|---|---|---|
| GDC (vSphere) | $0.03288 / vCPU | $24 / vCPU |
| GDC (Bare Metal) BM, BM2 | $0.03288 / vCPU | $24 / vCPU |
M - Estimated monthly price based on 730 hours in a month. GC - GKE Enterprise on Google Cloud pricing does not include charges for Google Cloud resources such as Compute Engine, Cloud Load Balancing, and Cloud Storage. AWS - GKE Enterprise on AWS pricing does not include any costs associated with AWS resources such as EC2, ELB, and S3. The customer is responsible for any charges for their AWS resources. AZ - GKE Enterprise on Azure pricing does not include any costs associated with Azure resources such as VMs, LBs, and Azure Storage. The customer is responsible for any charges for their Azure resources. BM - For GKE Enterprise / GDC (software only) on bare metal, if hyperthreading is enabled one CPU is equivalent to two vCPUs for pricing purposes. If hyperthreading is not enabled, one CPU is equivalent to one vCPU. BM2 - VM Runtime is a feature that can be enabled on GKE Enterprise / GDC (software only) on bare metal. It doesn't require an alternate SKU or additional pricing to be used. AC - For CNCF compliant clusters. Learn more.
If you are a new GKE Enterprise customer, you can try GKE Enterprise for free for a maximum of 90 days. You are still billed for applicable infrastructure usage during the trial. To sign up, go to the GKE Console and enable trial.
If at any time you want to stop using GKE Enterprise, follow the instructions in Disabling GKE Enterprise.
Autopilot mode
Autopilot clusters accrue a flat fee of $0.10/hour for each cluster after the free tier, in addition to charges for the workloads that you run. Autopilot uses a workload-driven provisioning model, where resources are provisioned based on the requirements specified in the Pod specification of your workloads. GKE includes a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that's financially backed providing availability of 99.95% for the control plane, and 99.9% for Autopilot Pods in multiple zones, or 99.99% for GKE Enterprise Autopilot Pods in multiple regions. Committed use discounts (CUDs) can be used to reduce costs for workloads that have predictable resource usage.
By default, workloads that you create are provisioned on our general-purpose computing platform where you're billed only for the resources that Pods request (and not for spare compute capacity or system overhead). If your workloads need to scale beyond 28 vCPU, you can use the Balanced or Scale-Out compute classes, which use the same approach of Pod-based compute provisioning and billing. If you enable Confidential GKE Nodes, additional charges apply. For more information, see Confidential GKE Nodes on GKE Autopilot pricing.
You can also request specific hardware like accelerators or Compute Engine machine series for your workloads. For these specialized workloads, Autopilot provisions nodes that have at least the requested compute capacity for the workload and bills you for the entire node. This node-based compute model is ideal for workloads that have specific hardware requirements, but requires you to consider how to fully utilize the resources provisioned.
These compute provisioning and billing approaches mean that you can use specific compute hardware for specialized workloads while using the simpler Pod-based compute provisioning approach for everything else.
Pods without specific hardware requirements
The default general-purpose platform and the Balanced and Scale-Out compute classes use a Pod-based billing model. You are charged in one-second increments for the CPU, memory, and ephemeral storage resources that your running Pods request in the Pod resource requests, with no minimum duration. This billing model applies to the default general-purpose platform and to the Balanced and Scale-Out compute classes. This model has the following considerations:
Autopilot sets a default value if no resource request was defined, and scales up values that don't meet the required minimums or CPU-to-memory ratio. Set the resource requests to what your workloads require to get the most optimal price.
You are only billed for Pods that are being created or are currently running (those in the Running phase, and those with the ContainerCreating status in the Pending phase). Pods waiting to be scheduled, and those that have terminated (like Pods marked as Succeeded or Failed) are not billed.
You are not charged for system Pods, operating system overhead, unallocated space, or unscheduled Pods. Set appropriate resource requests and Pod replica counts for your workloads for optimal cost. With the Pod-based billing model, the underlying node size or quantity doesn't matter for billing.
General-purpose (default) Pods
*Spot prices are dynamic and can change up to once every 30 days, but always provide discounts of 60-91% off of the corresponding regular price for CPU, memory and GPU.
Balanced and Scale-Out compute class Pods
*Spot prices are dynamic and can change up to once every 30 days, but always provide discounts of 60-91% off of the corresponding regular price for CPU, memory and GPU.
Pods that have specific hardware requirements
Autopilot uses a node-based billing model when you request specific hardware like accelerators or Compute Engine machine series. When your Pods request these types of hardware resources, GKE allocates predefined Compute Engine machine types that most closely fit the requests (as a result, they can be larger than what your Pod requested). You're charged for the underlying VM resources, to which any applicable discounts like Compute Engine CUDs apply, plus a management premium on the compute resources.
Because you're billed for the entire machine, ensure that these specialized workloads efficiently utilize the full resources of the provisioned machines. This consideration doesn't apply to the default Pod-based billing model, which is ideal for smaller workloads (those that request significantly less resources than the size of the smallest machine size in the machine series) and workloads that don't efficiently fit into the predefined Compute Engine machine types.
Node management premiums for accelerators and specific machine series
*Spot prices are dynamic and can change up to once every 30 days, but
always provide discounts of 60-91% off of the corresponding regular price
for CPU, memory and GPU.
Standard mode
Clusters created in Standard mode accrue a management fee of $0.10 per cluster per hour, irrespective of cluster size or topology, after the free tier. GKE cluster management fees do not apply to GKE Enterprise clusters.
In Standard mode, GKE uses Compute Engine instances worker nodes in the cluster. You are billed for each of those instances according to Compute Engine's pricing, until the nodes are deleted. Compute Engine resources are billed on a per-second basis with a one-minute minimum usage cost.
Compute Engine offers committed use discounts that apply to the Compute Engine instances in the cluster. To learn more, see Committed use discounts in Compute Engine .
GKE includes a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that's financially backed providing availability of 99.95% for the control plane of Regional clusters, and 99.5% for the control plane of Zonal clusters.
Cluster management fee and free tier
The cluster management fee of $0.10 per cluster per hour (charged in 1 second increments) applies to all GKE clusters irrespective of the mode of operation, cluster size or topology.
The GKE free tier provides $74.40 in monthly credits per billing account that are applied to zonal and Autopilot clusters. If you only use a single Zonal or Autopilot cluster, this credit will at least cover the complete cost of that cluster each month. Unused free tier credits are not rolled over, and cannot be applied to any other SKUs (for example, they cannot be applied to compute charges, or the cluster fee for Regional clusters).
The following conditions apply to the cluster management fee:
The fee is flat, irrespective of cluster size and topology—whether it is a single-zone cluster, multi-zonal cluster, regional or Autopilot cluster, all accrue the same flat fee per cluster.
The fee does not apply to GKE Enterprise clusters.
The following example demonstrates how the cluster management fee and free tier credit is applied for an organization’s billing accounts. In this example, the organization’s regional and zonal cluster hours are listed excluding GKE Enterprise cluster hours. The total billable amount is calculated per month, with the monthly free tier credit applied.
| Organization's billing accounts | Autopilot cluster hours per month | Regional cluster hours per month | Zonal cluster hours per month | Free tier credit used |
Total monthly GKE cluster management
fee (at $0.10/hour per cluster) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| account_1 | 744 | 0 | 0 | $74.40 | $0 |
| account_2 | 0 | 1000 | 500 | $50 | $100 |
| account_3 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | $74.40 | $225.60 |
Extended support period
Clusters on the Extended release channel can stay on their GKE minor version and receive extended support beyond the standard support period. With extended support, you can stay on a GKE minor release, supported, for up to 24 months. You will be charged an additional GKE extended period cluster management fee after the cluster has reached the end of standard support. There is no additional charge for using the Extended release channel during the standard support period and you can upgrade to a minor version covered under the standard support period at any time. To learn more, see Get long-term support with the Extended channel.
Priced at $0.50 per cluster per hour. The GKE extended period cluster management fee is in addition to the GKE cluster management fee at $0.10 per cluster per hour, for a total of $0.60 per cluster per hour. The GKE extended period cluster management fee is included in the GKE Enterprise edition.
Multi Cluster Ingress
Multi Cluster Ingress is included as part of GKE Enterprise, so there is no additional charge to use Multi Cluster Ingress in an GKE Enterprise on Google Cloud cluster. If you have GKE clusters that are not licensed for GKE Enterprise, you are billed at the standalone pricing rate when you use Multi Cluster Ingress. The functionality of Multi Cluster Ingress is the same whether you use it with GKE Enterprise licensing or standalone pricing. You can change how you are billed at any time by enrolling or unenrolling in GKE Enterprise.
In all cases, the load balancers and traffic for MultiClusterIngress resources
are charged separately, according to
load balancer pricing.
GKE Enterprise licensing
Multi Cluster Ingress is included as part of GKE Enterprise. If you enable the
GKE Enterprise API (gcloud services enable anthos.googleapis.com) and your
clusters are registered to a fleet,
then there is no additional charge to use Multi Cluster Ingress.
Standalone pricing
Multi Cluster Ingress standalone pricing is based on the number of Pods that are considered Multi Cluster Ingress backends at a cost of $3 per backend Pod per month (730 hours). This pricing is approximately $0.0041096 per backend Pod per hour, billed in 5 minute increments.
The number of backend Pods is the total number of Pods that are members of
MultiClusterService resources across all GKE clusters in your
project. The following example shows how backend Pods are counted:
Multi Cluster Ingress only charges Pods which are direct backends of MultiClusterIngress
resources. Pods which are not Multi Cluster Ingress backends are not charged.
In this example, there are three MultiClusterService resources across
two clusters with Pod backends. Pods that are members of Service A, B,
and C are not direct backends and are not billed against the standalone pricing.
Any Pod that is a member of multiple MultiClusterService resources is billed
for each MultiClusterService that they are a member of. Two Pods are members
of both the D and E MultiClusterService.
The following table summarizes the monthly cost total for standalone billing for the two clusters in the example:
| MultiClusterService | Pods | Cost per month |
|---|---|---|
| D | 3 | $9 |
| E | 4 | $12 |
| F | 1 | $3 |
| Total | 8 | $24 |
For more information on how to configure Multi Cluster Ingress billing, see API enablement.
Backup for GKE
Backup for GKE is a separate service from GKE that can be used to protect and manage GKE data.
Backup for GKE accrues fees along two dimensions: first, there is a GKE backup management fee, based on the number of GKE pods protected, and second, there is a backup storage fee, based on the amount of data (GiB) stored. Both fees are calculated on a monthly basis, similar to other GKE feature billing.
As an example, a customer with a single backup plan in Iowa (us-central1) that backs up an average of 20 pods during a month, storing 200GiB of backup storage data in Iowa, would be charged $25.60 in fees. This $25.60 would include $20 for the month for GKE backup management (20 x $1.00 / pod-month) and $5.60 for backup storage (200 * $0.028 / GiB-month).
Starting June 26 2023, new network outbound data transfer charges will be introduced for backups that are stored in a different region from their source GKE cluster. These charges will be based on the source and destination region and the number of bytes transferred for each such "cross-region" backup operation:
| GKE cluster location | Backup location | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern America | Europe | Asia | Indonesia | Oceania | Middle East | Latin America | Africa | |
| Northern America | $0.02/GiB | $0.05/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.11/GiB |
| Europe | $0.05/GiB | $0.02/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.11/GiB |
| Asia | $0.08/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.11/GiB |
| Indonesia | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | N/A | $0.08/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB |
| Oceania | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.10/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB |
| Middle East | $0.11/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.08/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.11/GiB |
| Latin America | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB |
| Africa | $0.11/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.14/GiB | $0.11/GiB | $0.14/GiB | N/A |
Pricing calculator
You can use the Google Cloud pricing calculator to estimate your monthly GKE charges, including cluster management fees and worker node pricing.
What's next
- Read the Google Kubernetes Engine documentation.
- Get started with Google Kubernetes Engine.
- Try the Pricing calculator.
- Learn about Google Kubernetes Engine solutions and use cases.