Estimating your bills

The information in this document applies to the current pricing for Google Cloud Observability.

Overview

Based on your usage data, you can estimate your bills for using Google Cloud Observability.

The Cloud Billing Reports page shows you your current usage data. In addition, the Logging and Monitoring pages in the Google Cloud console display your projected usage data for the current month.

This document details how to access your usage data, depending on the aggregation that you prefer:

• Usage by billing account
• View detailed usage in Metrics Explorer
• Logging usage by project or resource type
• Logs-based metrics usage
• Monitoring usage by metrics scope

Review usage data to estimate your bill

Once you have the usage data you want, as described on this page, you can estimate your future bill in two ways:

• Refer to the pricing information: Compare your current usage data with the prices found in this table to get an approximation of your future bills for Google Cloud Observability.

• Use the pricing calculator:

  Note: You must use the legacy pricing calculator. The pricing calculator doesn't support estimating costs for Synthetic Monitors.
  1. Select the Google Cloud Observability product.
  2. Add your current or projected metric usage data to the Metrics section and click Add to estimate.
  3. Add your current or projected Logging usage data to the Logs section and click Add to estimate.
  4. Add your current Trace usage data to the Trace spans section and click Add to estimate.
  5. Add your current uptime check usage data to the Uptime Checks section and click Add to estimate.

  6. After you have input your usage data, click Estimate.

     Estimates of your future bills for using Google Cloud Observability appear. You can also email and save the estimate.

Note: Any estimated fees are approximations and for discussion purposes only.

View usage by billing account

You can view your usage information for all Google Cloud Observability services or for a subset of services or SKUs, and you can view usage for specific time periods.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Billing page:

   Go to Billing

   You can also find this page by using the search bar.

2. If you have more than one billing account, then select the billing account. If you don't know which billing account is used for a specific project, then do the following:

   1. Select the My projects tab.
   2. Ensure the proper organization is selected, and then search for your project.
   3. Select the account listed in the Billing account column.

3. In the navigation pane, select Reports.

4. If the Filters pane isn't visible, then go to the Reports toolbar and click Filters.

5. In the Filters pane, expand the Group By menu and then select SKU.

6. In the Filters pane, expand the Services menu and then make the following selections:

   • Cloud Logging
   • Cloud Monitoring
   • Cloud Trace

   The Reports page displays a bar chart and a table, each with one entry for every SKU that corresponds to the services that you selected that have charges. The table displays the cost and the usage per SKU:

   

7. To view information only for a specific SKU or set of SKUs, expand the SKUs menu and select that SKU or set of SKUs. For example, if you only want to view the usage for your log storage costs, expand the SKUs menu and select Log Storage cost.

8. Optional: Update the time period for the billing data. By default, the time period is set to the current month.

View detailed usage in Metrics Explorer

You can use Metrics Explorer to view the data used for billing.

Note: Cloud Logging charges for both of the following:

• Storage: the volume of logs that are streamed into log bucket storage for indexing, querying, and analysis.
• Retention: the volume of logs stored in log buckets for longer than the free retention period of the log bucket.

The metrics described in this section are for storage only.

For more information, see Pricing. For information about estimating Logging retention costs, see View Logging usage.

To view the metrics for a monitored resource by using the Metrics Explorer, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the  Metrics explorer page:

   Go to Metrics explorer

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

2. In the Metric element, expand the Select a metric menu, enter Global in the filter bar, and then use the submenus to select a specific resource type and metric:
   1. In the Active resources menu, select Global.
   2. In the Active metric categories menu, select Billing.
   3. In the Active metrics menu, select a billing metric^†.

      • Log bytes ingested: Log bytes for a project streamed for storage in Logging.

        Don't select Log bytes, which isn't a billing metric. This metric is computed differently from the billing metric.

      • Log bucket bytes ingested: Bytes steamed for storage into individual log buckets in Logging.
      • Monthly log bytes ingested: Each point represents the month-to-date sum of log bytes streamed for storage in Logging for your project. The monthly total is available on the last day of the month, when it also resets.
      • Log bucket monthly bytes ingested: Each point represents the month-to-date sum of log bytes streamed for storage into individual log buckets in Logging. The monthly total is available on the last day of the month, when it also resets.
      • Metric bytes ingested: Chargeable number of bytes of metric data streamed for storage in Monitoring.
      • Metric samples ingested: Chargeable number of samples of metric data streamed for storage in Monitoring. For more information about features that charge by samples, see Metrics charged by samples ingested.
      • Trace spans ingested: Chargeable trace spans streamed for storage in Trace.
      • Monthly trace spans ingested: Each point represents the month-to-date sum of trace spans streamed for storage in Trace. It resets on the last day of the month; the monthly total is found on the last day of the month.

      ^† Billing metrics have billing in their names, for example, logging.googleapis.com/billing/log_bytes_ingested.

   4. Click Apply.

3. To remove time series from the display, use the Filter element.

4. To combine time series, use the menus on the Aggregation element. For example, to display the CPU utilization for your VMs, based on their zone, set the first menu to Mean and the second menu to zone.

   All time series are displayed when the first menu of the Aggregation element is set to Unaggregated. The default settings for the Aggregation element are determined by the metric type you selected.

5. For quota and other metrics that report one sample per day, do the following:
   1. In the Display pane, set the Widget type to Stacked bar chart.
   2. Set the time period to at least one week.

Your usage data appears, filtered by the metrics you selected. If metrics usage data doesn't appear in the chart, then you might need to zoom out to 1w or 1m in the time range selector above the chart.

Key Points:

• To identify the metric or resource type with the highest usage, use the Sort & Limits fields in Metrics Explorer.
• For information about managing costs of user-defined metrics, see View and manage metric usage.

View Logging usage

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Logs Storage page:

   Go to Logs Storage

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Logging.

   The Logs Storage page displays a summary of your logging data streamed for storage for the selected Google Cloud project. This data includes the current calendar month's to-date usage, the previous calendar month's total usage, and the projected total usage for the current calendar month.

2. Optional: To review your project-level billing data in detail, click See bill under Previous month volume.

   The Cloud Billing Reports page opens.

3. Optional: To view usage by resource type, in the summary section, go to the Current month ingestion pane and click See ingestion analysis.

   Your usage data appears in Metrics Explorer, grouped by resource_type. You can further modify how the data is displayed, using the Filter, Group By, and Aggregator menus. For more details, see View detailed usage in Metrics Explorer.

View logs-based metrics usage

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Logs Explorer page:

   Go to Logs Explorer

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Logging.

2. Select Logs-based metrics.

3. In the User-defined Metrics table, your usage data appears:

   • Previous Month Usage represents the sum of bytes for the logs-based metric in the previous calendar month.
   • Usage (MTD) represents the sum of bytes for the logs-based metric in the current calendar month.

4. Optional: To sort the data in ascending or descending order, click a column name. Sorting the rows is helpful, for example, when you want to review which metrics have the most data.

View Monitoring metrics usage by metrics scope

A metrics scope is used in Cloud Monitoring to let you view metrics that are stored in multiple Google Cloud projects or AWS accounts. When you configure a metrics scope, you don't affect which project receives metric data or cause data to be duplicated.

For example, suppose Project-A contains 60 VMs and Project-B contains 40 VMs. If you create a metrics scope that includes Project-A and Project-B, then you can view the combined metrics for the 100 VMs. You can now view just the metrics for Project-A, just the metrics of Project-B, or the combination of metrics from both projects. Even though you have two ways to view the metrics of Project-A, there aren't billing implications.

To view your Monitoring usage by metrics scope, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the  Settings page:

   Go to Settings

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

2. Select the Summary tab.

   The Metrics Ingested table displays a summary of your metrics streamed for storage by resource. This data includes the previous month's total usage, the current month's to-date usage, and projected usage for the current month.

3. Optional: To get your project-level usage in detail, click View Bill in the Metrics Ingested table.

   The Cloud Billing Reports page opens.