Google Cloud Storage Pricing

This document discusses pricing for Cloud Storage. Prices are effective October 20, 2016.

When charging in local currency, Google will convert the prices listed into applicable local currency pursuant to the conversion rates published by leading financial institutions.

Pricing overview

Cloud Storage pricing is based on a flat rate for storage and a usage rate for network. Project storage usage and bandwidth usage are calculated in gigabytes (GB), where 1GB is 2³⁰ bytes. This unit of measurement is also known as a gibibyte (GiB). Similarly, 1TB is 2⁴⁰ bytes, i.e. 1024 GBs.

Project storage and bandwidth usage charges accrue daily, but Google Cloud Storage bills you only at the end of the billing period. You can view unbilled usage at any time in the Billing menu of your project in the Google Cloud Platform Console. For an example scenario that shows usage and charges, see Detailed Pricing Example.

Important: Cloud Storage requires billing information for all accounts before you can start using the service. To sign up for billing, go to your project's billing page in the Google Cloud Platform Console.

Cloud Storage Always Free Usage Limits

As part of the Google Cloud Platform Free Tier, Cloud Storage provides usage that is free to use up to a specific limit. These usage limits are available both during and after the free trial period. If you go over these usage limits and are no longer in the free trial period, you are charged according to the price sheet below.

Resource	Monthly Free Usage Limits
Regional Storage	5 GB-months
Class A Operations	5,000
Class B Operations	50,000
Network Egress	1 GB from North America to each GCP egress destination (Australia and China excluded)

Cloud Storage Always Free quotas apply to usage in us-west1, us-central1, and us-east1 regions. Usage is aggregated across these 3 regions. If you go over the quotas you are charged according to the standard price sheet. Always Free is subject to change. Please see our FAQ for eligibility requirements and other restrictions.

Your Google Cloud Storage account is billed according to the following tables:

Storage

General Pricing

Multi-Regional Storage (per GB per Month)	Regional Storage (per GB per Month)	Nearline Storage (per GB per Month)	Coldline Storage (per GB per Month)
$0.026	$0.02	$0.01	$0.007

Tokyo (asia-northeast1) Region Pricing

Regional Storage (per GB per Month)	Nearline Storage (per GB per Month)	Coldline Storage (per GB per Month)
$0.023	$0.016	$0.01

Storage charges are prorated on a per-object basis (with the exception of Nearline Storage and Coldline Storage data deleted or modified prior to their minimal storage duration, see below). For example, a 15 GB object that exists in a Multi-Regional Storage bucket for 12 hours will incur a charge of $0.0065 (0.026($/GB/mo.) * 15(GB) * 0.5(days) / 30(days/mo.)) in a month with 30 days -- the charge is slightly lower or higher in a month with more or fewer days, respectively.

For buckets with object versioning enabled, each archived version of an object is charged at the same rate as the live version of the object.

For compressed objects that are transcoded during download, storage rates are based on the compressed size of the object whereas egress rates are based on the uncompressed size of the object.

Note: Google Cloud Storage also has a storage class Durable Reduced Availability (DRA); however, it is recommended that users utilize Regional Storage in favor of DRA. Regional Storage has lower pricing for operations, but otherwise the same price structure. Regional Storage also has better performance, particularly in terms of availability.

Nearline Storage and Coldline Storage

Because Google Cloud Storage Nearline and Google Cloud Storage Coldline are intended for infrequently accessed data, in addition to normal egress and data transfer charges apply, you incur the following costs for data access and early deletion:

Data retrieval

Reading Nearline Storage data incurs a cost of $0.01 per GB.
Reading Coldline Storage data incurs a cost of $0.05 per GB.

Early deletion

Nearline Storage data that is deleted less than 30 days after creation incurs a minimum 30-day charge.
Coldline Storage data that is deleted less than 90 days after creation incurs a minimum 90-day charge.

For example, suppose you store 1,000 GB of Coldline Storage data in a US region. If you add the data on day 1 and then remove it on day 60, you are charged $14 ($0.007/GB/mo. * 1,000 GB * 2 mo.) for storage from day 1 to 60, and then $7 ($0.007/GB/mo. * 1,000 GB * 1 mo.) for 30 days of early deletion from day 61 to 90.

Early deletion charges apply when you overwrite existing objects, since the original object is replaced by a new one. For example, if you create a Nearline Storage object and 10 days later you overwrite it in order to change its storage class, this change is considered an early deletion. You are charged for the remaining 20 days of storage.

Data retrieval and early deletion charges apply when you move an existing object, because "moving" an object in Cloud Storage actually copies the object, then deletes the original object. For example, if you create a Coldline Storage object and 45 days later you move the object, this change is considered an early deletion. You are charged for retrieving the object and for the remaining 45 days of storage for the original object, and you are also charged for storage of the new object.

Network

Egress^*

Data egress charges apply when a user or non-Cloud Storage service reads data from a bucket (though in certain cases, egress to other Google Cloud Platform services is free, as described below). Egress charges do not apply when moving data from one Cloud Storage bucket to another, but there may be data transfer charges instead.

Europe

Taiwan

Tokyo

Singapore

Monthly Usage	Network (Egress) China Destinations (excluding Hong Kong) (per GB)	Network (Egress) Australia Destinations (per GB)	Network (Ingress)
0-1 TB	$0.23	$0.19	Free
1-10 TB	$0.22	$0.18	Free
10+ TB	$0.20	$0.15	Free

^*These rates do not apply for Cloud CDN, CDN Interconnect, Cloud Interconnect, or Direct Peering traffic. Instead, see pricing for Cloud CDN, CDN Interconnect, Cloud Interconnect, or Direct Peering.

Egress from Cloud Storage buckets to Google Cloud Platform services in the same location or a sub-location is free. This includes data egress in the following scenarios:

From a multi-regional bucket to a service in the same multi-region, such as from an eu bucket to an eu App Engine instance.
From a regional bucket to a service in the same region, such as from an asia-east1 bucket to an asia-east1 Compute Engine instance.
From a multi-regional bucket to a service in one of the regions that makes up the multi-region, such as from a us bucket to an us-west1 Container Engine instance.
From a regional bucket to a service in the larger multi-region, such as from a us-east1 bucket to a us App Engine instance.

Data transfer between regional and multi-regional locations

Data transfer charges apply when you move data from one bucket in Cloud Storage to another.

Regional and Multi-Region Data Transfer
Transfer within a regional location (for example, `us-east1` to `us-east1`)	Free
Transfer within a multi-region location (for example, `us` to `us`)	Free
Transfer to a different regional location within a multi-region location (for example, `us-east1` to `us-central1`, `us-east1` to `us`, or `us` to `us-central1`)	$0.01/GB
Transfer between different multi-region locations (for example, `us` to `asia`, `us` to `asia-east1`, or `us-east1` to `asia-east1`)	$0.12/GB 0-1 TB $0.11/GB 1-10 TB $0.08/GB 10+ TB

For a list of locations and regions you can use when creating a bucket, see bucket locations and regional buckets.

Note that if your source and destination buckets are in the same location, charges are only incurred if you are transferring out of the Nearline Storage or Coldline Storage class. For more information about Nearline Storage and Coldline Storage costs, see Nearline Storage and Coldline Storage Pricing.

You can view your current usage in the billing details for your project.

Custom metadata

Custom metadata headers are accounted for in your monthly storage and bandwidth usage. For example, for the custom header x-goog-meta-name: value, Google Cloud Storage counts each character in name and value as a byte stored with the object and transferred in object requests. For more information about custom headers, see HTTP Headers and Query String Parameters.

Operations

Operation charges apply when you perform operations within Cloud Storage. Operations are divided into three categories: free, Class A and Class B, and billing rates are per 10,000 operations. See below for a breakdown of which operations fall into each class.

Storage Class	Class A operations (per 10,000 operations)	Class B operations (per 10,000 operations)	Free operations
Multi-Regional and Regional	$0.05	$0.004	Free
Nearline and Durable Reduced Availability	$0.10	$0.01	Free
Coldline	$0.10	$0.05	Free

JSON API operation classes

If you access Cloud Storage through the JSON API, either directly or via the Console, gsutil, or one of the Veneer client libraries, operations are categorized as follows:

Operation	Class
storage..insert storage..patch storage.*.update storage.buckets.list storage.objects.compose storage.objects.copy storage.objects.list storage.objects.rewrite storage.objects.watchAll storage.bucketAccessControls.delete storage.defaultObjectAccessControls.delete storage.objectAccessControls.delete	Class A
storage.*.get storage.bucketAccessControls.list storage.defaultObjectAccessControls.list storage.objectAccessControls.list Each notification	Class B
storage.channels.stop storage.buckets.delete storage.objects.delete	Free

XML API operation classes

If you access Cloud Storage through the XML API, either directly or via gsutil, operations are categorized as follows:

Operation	Class
GET Service GET Bucket (when listing objects in a bucket) PUT POST	Class A
GET Bucket (when retrieving bucket configuration) GET Object HEAD	Class B
DELETE	Free

Note: Generally, you are not charged for operations that return 307, 4xx, or 5xx responses. The exception is 404 responses returned by buckets with Website Configuration enabled and the NotFoundPage property set to a public object in that bucket.

Lifecycle Management operation classes

If you use Object Lifecycle Management to automatically change the storage classes of your objects, operation rates are determined by the original storage class of the object. Operations are categorized as follows:

Operation	Class
SetStorageClass	Class A
Delete	Free

You can manage billing for a Google Cloud Storage project by going to Google Cloud Platform Console, selecting a project, and opening the project's Billing page.

Storage Transfer Service

Charges related to using Cloud Storage Transfer Service include:

When transferring data from an external source into Google Cloud Storage, you may incur egress and operation charges based on the pricing policy of the source provider. For example, when moving data from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to Google Cloud Storage, the pricing in the Amazon S3 Pricing page applies for requests and data transferred out.
When transferring data from any source into Google Cloud Storage, you will incur charges for insertion of each object into Google Cloud Storage (a PUT operation). For more information, see Operation Pricing.
When transferring data from one Cloud Storage bucket to another, you may incur transfer charges for transferring between buckets in different locations. For more information, see Network Pricing. In addition, early deletion from Google Cloud Storage Nearline or Google Cloud Storage Coldline incurs a cost. For more information see Nearline Storage and Coldline Storage pricing.
When you use Storage Transfer Service, operation charges apply for managing objects in buckets both in Google Cloud Storage and storage providers external to Google. For example, a transfer operation from an external provider into Google Cloud Storage might need to list bucket contents in both the source and destination locations. For more information, see Operation Pricing and the appropriate pricing page for the source provider.

Pricing examples

Simple pricing example

In this example, we show a simple scenario that might apply if you are just getting started with Google Cloud Storage. We use a monthly billing period to simplify the calculations.

Suppose you have the following storage usage pattern in a given month:

50 GB of Multi-Regional Storage data, from the first day to the end of the billing month.
10 GB of network egress (Americas and EMEA). (Ingress is free.)
10,000 total PUT/POST, GET bucket (list), GET service requests, Class A operations.
10,000 total GET object and HEAD requests, Class B operations.

Your bill for the month would be calculated as follows:

50 GB Multi-Regional Storage at $0.026/per GB: $1.30
10 GB of network egress at $0.12/per GB: $1.20
10,000 Class A operations at $0.05/per 10,000 operations: $0.05
10,000 Class B operations at $0.004/per 10,000 operations: $0.004

Total for Simple Pricing Example: $2.554

Detailed pricing example

In this example, storage usage changes during the billing period (chosen to be one month to simplify the calculations). At the end of the billing period, we calculate an average usage per month, which is billed as if your usage was effectively static at this average value. Furthermore, bandwidth and storage usage spans pricing tiers. These factors are accounted for in the following usage calculation.