Understanding how cost savings are calculated in recommendations

Overview

Active Assist cost optimization recommendations help Google Cloud users optimize their cloud deployment cost such as by identifying waste (idle resources), highlighting over-provisioned resources, and optimizing pricing models. In each of those cost optimization recommendations, you can typically find an estimated cost saving amount, if you were to decide and take the suggested action. This document provides information on how those cost saving estimates are calculated, based on the contract type you may have with Google Cloud and your specific role and permissions.

If your Cloud Billing Account is associated with a custom pricing contract and if you have the required permissions to view costs and usage, the cost optimization recommendations that are visible to you will reflect your custom contract pricing (based on your historical costs) in the cost saving calculation. Without permissions to see costs and usage, the cost savings presented in those recommendations will be calculated by using the list pricing.

This cost saving calculation methodology applies to all Active Assist recommendations surfaces, Cloud Console, BigQuery Export, and Recommender.

Fields in the UI, API, BigQuery Export

Based on your permissions, you will see different values in the PricingType field.

List Cost savings calculation is based on list pricing
Custom Cost savings calculation is based on your custom contract pricing (based on your historical costs)

Permissions required to see cost recommendations with custom contractual pricing

To view your cost recommendations reflecting custom contract pricing (based on your historical costs), you need a role that includes the following permissions, depending on the scope of the recommendation.

  • billing.resourceCosts.get to view costs and usage for a project. This is applicable to recommendations that are scoped at the project level - the vast majority of cost recommendations fall into this category. To gain this permission, ask your administrator to grant you the above permission for the projects you need.

  • billing.accounts.getSpendingInformation to view costs and usage for a billing account. This is applicable to recommendations that are scoped at the Billing Account level, for example Committed use discount recommender. To gain this permission, ask your administrator to grant you one of the following Cloud Billing IAM roles on your Cloud Billing account:

    • Billing Account Administrator
    • Billing Account Costs Manager
    • Billing Account Viewer

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