This page contains information about the pricing models you can choose for Kubernetes apps, and about submitting your pricing plan structure for review.
You can choose one of the following pricing models for your product:
Free: Customers only pay for the Google Cloud resources that they use, such as the cost for running Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. If you're offering your app free of charge, skip to Add your pricing model to Producer Portal.
Bring your own license (BYOL): Customers pay you for the app directly, and are billed separately for the Google Cloud resources that they use. You're responsible for making sure that your customers are using a valid license for your app.
Usage-based pricing: Customers pay for your software based on measurements that you choose, called metrics, such as the number of containers they run your app on.
If you choose usage-based pricing, you can also offer a free trial of your product. If you want to offer free trials with a BYOL pricing model, you must implement the trial license in your billing system.
After you have decided on your pricing model and set up your pricing plans, add it to your product in the portal so that it can be processed.
You can also create customized quotes for specific customers. For example, if you offer a usage-based plan for $5 per running container, you can create a custom quote that gives your customer the same plan for $2 per running container. For steps to create a custom quote, see Creating custom quotes.
Bring your own license (BYOL) pricing
If you want to bill customers yourself, you can choose a Bring your own license (BYOL) pricing model. You must provide a way for your customers to get a licence from you, typically through a website. After the customer gets their license, you are responsible for validating the license in your app.
If you want to use a BYOL pricing model, skip to Adding your pricing model in Producer Portal.
Usage-based pricing
Kubernetes apps are priced by usage, so customers pay for your software based on measurements that you choose, called metrics, such as the number of containers or storage time. A typical example of a metric is the time for which customers use your product. For example, you can charge $0.05 per hour of use. Similarly, you can charge customers by the quantity of data processed by your app, the number of API requests customers make, and so on.
While you are choosing your metrics, you must also choose a reporting unit for each metric, which represents the granularity with which you measure your app's usage. By default, you must measure the reporting unit as an integer, and not as a fractional number.
For example, consider an app for which you charge
$0.256 per gibibyte (1024 mebibytes) of data processed, and your reporting unit
is by mebibyte. If a user processes 512 mebibytes of data, they are charged
(512 Mib / 1024 MiB) * $0.256, or $0.128 for their usage. However, if your
reporting unit is by gibibyte, the customer's usage is reported as 1 GiB, and
they are charged the full $0.256 even if they use a fraction of a gibibyte.
The following table includes examples of the types of metrics you can use and the recommended reporting units:
| Metric type | Supported units | Recommended reporting unit | Example price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Second, minute, hour, day | 1 second (smallest possible) | $5 per hour |
| Data processed |
Byte, Kibibyte (KiB), Mebibyte (MiB), Gibibyte (GiB) The units for data processed are based on binary multiples, where one Kibibyte is 1024 bytes, one Mebibyte is 1024 Kibibytes, and so on. | 1 Mebibyte (MiB) | $10 per GiB |
| Storage time | See units for time and data | 1 Mebibyte-second | $10 per GiB-hour |
| Custom metric | N/A. You define the unit you want to measure, such as API request. | Depends on metric. | $10 per 1000 API requests |
If you want to charge by a custom metric, ensure that the measurement is a delta metric, where each usage report represents the change in the value since the previous report. For example, you can set a price per email, and every hourly usage report represents the number of emails sent in the previous hour.
Define your pricing structure
After you have selected your metrics, you can select one of the following pricing structures:
Single-rate pricing: Customers pay a set price for their usage, and the charges increase in direct proportion to their usage. For example, if you charge $0.50 per hour of usage, and a customer uses your app for 20 hours, they are charged $10.
Tiered pricing: If you want to give customers sustained-use discounts, you can create pricing tiers. If your price is based on more than one metric, you can define a separate set of tiers for each metric that you base your price on.
The tiers are applied as you go, over the course of the billing month. At the start of each new billing month, the price is reset to the first tier.
For example, if you want to charge users for each API request, as well as for storage time, you might set the following pricing tiers for each metric:
Pricing tiers for API requests Pricing tiers for storage time - $0.002 per API request for 0-1000 requests
- $0.001 per API request for 1001-2000 requests
- $0.0001 per API request for 2001+ requests
- $0.05 per GiB-hour for 0-1000 GiB-hours
- $0.001 per GiB-hour for 1001-2000 GiB-hours
- $0.0001 per GiB-hour for 2001+ GiB-hours
For example, in the sample pricing model above, if a user makes 1500 API requests in a billing month, they will be charged $0.002 per request for the first 1000 API requests, then $0.001 per request for the remaining 500 API requests. However, their first API request of the next billing month would once again be charged at the $0.002 tier, as one of the new month's first 1000 API requests.
Add your pricing model to Producer Portal
After you have selected your pricing model, you can add it to the portal. Pricing models take up to four business days to review. You can continue integrating your product while the pricing model is reviewed.
You can't modify your pricing model while it's under review.
Open Producer Portal in the Google Cloud console:
https://console.cloud.google.com/producer-portal?project=YOUR_PUBLIC_PROJECT_ID
In the list of products, click the name of your product.
On the Overview page of your product, go to the Pricing section and click EDIT.
Defining your pricing structures
For each pricing model you want to support, create a name for your pricing plan and follow the steps to define the pricing structure. You can have one pricing plan for each product.
After you define the pricing structures for all of the pricing models you want to support, click SET UP to set up the pricing structures and continue on to the remaining features of the Pricing page.
Free
- In the Pricing model drop-down list, select Free.
Bring your own license pricing
- In the Pricing model drop-down list, select Bring your own license (BYOL).
Usage-based pricing
In the Pricing model drop-down list, select Usage-based only.
In the Metrics drop-down list, select ADD OR UPDATE METRICS to add a metric.
For each metric that you add, you must enter a Display name, a Reporting unit, and a Display unit, and then click either DONE or ADD ANOTHER METRIC. The Reporting unit specifies how your metric tracks usage for billing, while the Display unit specifies how your metric's pricing is displayed. For example, you may want to charge your users by per second of usage, but display your product's price per hour to your customers.
Optionally, you can choose to measure the reporting unit using fractions.
Adding pricing details for your pricing structures
After you define your pricing structures, you can add the pricing details for your pricing structures.
To add pricing details for the pricing structures you defined, navigate to the Pricing section of Producer Portal.
Bring your own license pricing
- Enter the URL that customers use to get their license in the License Acquisition URL field.
Usage-based pricing
Click EDIT USAGE.
For single-rate pricing, add a Display Quantity and a Price.
For tiered pricing, enter a Display Quantity, and click ADD TIER for each additional tier that you would like to add. Once you see the correct number of tiers, add a Price, and a lower limit for the tier in the From field. The upper limit for each tier is updated when you add the lower limit of the next tier.
Click DONE.
Adding pricing descriptions to your plans
After you add your pricing details, you can describe your pricing model, default configuration, or other special instructions by using the FEATURES tab of the Pricing details section.
Answering tax category questions
After you add features to your pricing plans, you can use the TAX CATEGORY tab of the Pricing details section to answer questions about your product. Your answers to these questions are used by Google for internal classification purposes only.
(For partners with a US payment profile) Answer tax withholding questions
If you have a payment profile with a US address, then after you've answered the questions about your product's tax category, you should answer additional questions related to tax withholding. Your answers to these questions help Google categorize your product for tax purposes. This information is captured to ensure accurate withholding and reporting on your earned income. To answer these questions, from the Pricing details section, visit the Tax withholding tab.
Adding an end user license agreement (EULA)
Add an end user license agreement (EULA) in the Terms & Policies tab. We recommend that you use the Google standard EULA if your product allows it. This might help users adopt your product more quickly.
If your product requires a specialized EULA, add your EULA's URL to the EULA URL field.
Submitting your pricing model for review
When you're ready to submit your pricing model for processing, click Submit.
You can't modify your pricing model while it's under review.
(Optional) Offering trial software
If you want to offer a trial of your software to Google Cloud users, fill out the Cloud Marketplace solution trial intake form. You must specify:
- The trial period, in days—for example, 30 days. The trial period must last for at least 5 days.
- The trial value, in US dollars—for example, US$100. The trial value must be at least US$50.
Customers can choose any of your pricing plans, and the trial credit applies to the plan that they choose.
The trial ends when the customer reaches the credit limit, or at the end of the trial period, whichever comes first. For example, if you offer a 15-day trial with a maximum credit of $100, the trial ends when users reach the $100 limit, or at the end of 15 days.
At the end of the trial period, customers are charged based on the pricing plan that they chose. If the customer changed their plan during the trial, they are charged based on their new plan.
If your product's pricing is usage-based, we recommend a trial credit limit that is twice the cost of the usage that you expect.
Updating the price of products after launch
If it's been at least 30 days after your pricing model has been published and approved, you can update the price of your product.
To update the price of your product, follow these steps:
Open Producer Portal in the Google Cloud console:
https://console.cloud.google.com/producer-portal?project=YOUR_PUBLIC_PROJECT_ID
Replace YOUR_PUBLIC_PROJECT_ID with the ID for the public project that you created for Cloud Marketplace—for example,
my-organization-public.In the list of products, click the product ID.
On the Overview page, under Pricing review, click EDIT.
Make your updates to your pricing.
When you're done, click Submit.
You do not need to republish your product. Your product's price is updated after the new pricing is reviewed and approved.
Deleting a pricing plan
If you want to delete a pricing plan in Producer Portal, you must make sure that it has no deployments associated with it, including both active and cancelled deployments. This means that you can't delete a pricing plan on your own if it has previously been purchased.
To delete a plan that has deployments associated with it, contact your Google Partner Engineer.