This page contains information about the pricing models you can choose for virtual machine (VM) products. Review the information to decide on a pricing model for your product.
Pricing models take up to four business days to review. You can continue integrating your product while the pricing model is reviewed.
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 VM instances. If you are offering your product free of charge, skip to Adding your pricing model to Producer Portal.
Bring your own license (BYOL): Customers pay you directly for the product itself, and are billed separately for the Google Cloud resources that they use. You are 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 amount of RAM used by a VM product.
You can also create customized quotes for specific customers. For steps to create a custom quote, see Creating private offers for specific customers.
After you've decided on your pricing model, you must add it to your product in Producer Portal so that it can be processed.
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 license from you, typically through a website. Cloud Marketplace asks that customers get your license ID before deploying a BYOL product. After the deployment, you are responsible for validating the license ID entered by the partner.
Google will bill the customer independently for infrastructure usage costs of running the product.
If you want to use a BYOL pricing model, skip to Adding your pricing model to Producer Portal.
Usage-based pricing
VM products are priced by usage, so customers pay for your software based on measurements that you choose, such as the number of vCPUs used.
Define your pricing structure
For usage-based pricing, select one of the following options:
Instance-based pricing: Charge a single hourly rate for your product. Customers are charged based on the length of time that the product is used, with a minimum length of one minute. After the first minute, products are charged in increments of one second.
Resource-based pricing: Charge a rate based on the resources in the product. Depending on their workloads, users can choose the number of vCPUs and the RAM that they can add to their VMs. For products with heavy computation needs, users can also add GPUs to their VMs.
You can charge by the number of vCPUs, size of the system's memory, number of GPUs, or a combination of these options.
If you choose resource-based pricing, for each type of resource, choose one of the following models:
- Flat rate: Set a per-unit price for resources. For example, you can set a price for every vCPU used in the product.
- Tiered: Set a price by tiers. For example, you can set one price for 1 to 5 vCPUs, another for 6 to 10 vCPUs, and so on.
Google bills users on a monthly basis for software and infrastructure use.
Add your pricing model to Producer Portal
After you have decided on your pricing model, you can add it to Producer Portal.
To add your pricing model to Producer Portal and submit it for review:
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 name of your product.
On the Overview page, under Pricing review, click Edit.
Set up your pricing structure based on the pricing model:
BYOL
Enter a name for your pricing plan.
In the Pricing option drop-down list, select BYOL and then click Set up.
In the Price model pane, in the License Acquisition URL field, enter the URL that customers must use to get their license. Click Next.
Optionally, add a pricing description that customers see when comparing VM products on Cloud Marketplace. Click Next.
Complete the tax category information. Click Next.
(For partners with a US payment profile) Complete the withholding tax information. Click Next.
In the Terms & Policies pane, enter the URL for your end user license agreement (EULA).
Click Submit.
Free
Enter a name for your pricing plan.
In the Pricing option drop-down list, select Free and then click Set up.
In the Price model pane, review the details and click Next.
Optionally, add a pricing description that customers see when comparing VM products on Cloud Marketplace. Click Next.
Complete the tax category information. Click Next.
(For partners with a US payment profile) Complete the withholding tax information. Click Next.
In the Terms & Policies pane, enter the URL for your end user license agreement (EULA).
Click Submit.
Usage-based pricing
Enter a name for your pricing plan.
In the Pricing option drop-down list, select Usage-based pricing.
Complete the remaining steps to create either a resource-based or instance-based pricing model:
Resource-based pricing
- In the Metrics drop-down list, select the unit that this metric measures. It can be either the number of CPUs, the amount of RAM, or the number of GPUs used for the product. You can select any combination of these metrics for your product.
- Click Set up.
- In the Price model pane, click Edit usage fees.
For each metric, select the type of rate:
- Flat rate: The flat cost, per unit of measure per hour, for this metric.
- Tiered rate: The cost per hour, which varies across multiple tiers of usage. For example, you can set one price for 0 to 128 GB of RAM per hour, another price for 129-256 GB of RAM per hour, and so on.
Complete the metric details.
If you're using a tiered rate, click Add tier. From there, you can set minimum and maximum values for each tier. By default, the first tier starts at 0. The upper limit of each tier is updated when you add the lower limit of the next tier.
After entering details for each metric, click Done.
Click Pricing preview to see a summary table that displays the details and usage fees for your pricing model. Exit the preview and click Next.
Optionally, add a pricing description that customers see when comparing VM products on Cloud Marketplace. Click Next.
Complete the tax category information. Click Next.
(Partners with US Payment Profile only) Complete the withholding tax information. Click Next
In the Terms & Policies pane, enter the URL for your end user license agreement (EULA).
Click Submit.
Instance-based pricing
In the Metrics drop-down list, select Hourly instance fee.
Click Set up.
In the Price model pane, click Edit usage fees to add the price per hour that you want to charge customers for using your product. Click Done.
Click Pricing preview to see a summary table that displays the details and usage fees for your pricing model. Exit the preview and click Next.
Optionally, add a pricing description that customers see when comparing VM products on Cloud Marketplace. Click Next.
Complete the tax category information. Click Next.
(For partners with a US payments profile only) Complete the withholding tax information. Click Next.
In the Terms & Policies pane, enter the URL for your end user license agreement (EULA).
Click Submit.
After you submit your pricing model, it can take up to four business days to process.
(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.
Update the price of products after launch
If it's been at least 30 days since your pricing model was published and approved, you can update the price of your product.
To update the price of your product, follow these steps:
- In the list of products, click the name of your product.
- Go to the pricing section of your product.
- Click Edit content.
- Make your updates to your pricing.
- When you're done, click Submit price model.
Your product's price is updated after the new pricing is reviewed and approved.
It takes up to four business days for price updates to be reviewed and approved. If you're decreasing your price, your price decrease does not require any additional waiting period. If you're increasing your price, it takes an additional 45 days from the Operations team's confirmation of receipt of your request for the price increase to take effect. This time window includes 15 days to draft and send a message to active users, and 30 days for users to review the price change.