Certain images available on Compute Engine are considered premium images and incur charges to use. These images include:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL and RHEL for SAP)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES and SLES for SAP)
• Ubuntu Pro
• Windows Server
• SQL Server

Note: If you are a Microsoft licensee with a contract that includes Software Assurance, you might be able to move your existing SQL Server licenses to Compute Engine. For more information about License Mobility, see Using existing Microsoft licenses.

The price for a premium image depends on which machine type you use. For example, a standard SLES image costs $0.02 per hour to run on an f1-micro VM, but the same image costs $0.11 per hour to run on an n1-standard-8 VM. The prices for premium images are the same worldwide and don't differ based on zones or regions.

All prices for premium images are in addition to charges for using a machine type. For example, the total price for using an n1-standard-8 VM with an SLES image is the sum of the machine type cost and the image cost:

n1-standard-8 cost + SLES image cost = $0.379998 + $0.11 = $0.49 per hour

Spot VMs (and preemptible VMs) don't reduce the costs of premium images and don't change the way that you are billed for the use of those images. If Compute Engine terminates the Spot VMs (or preemptible VMs) that run a premium image, you are billed for that image as if you terminated the VM yourself. The charges for minimum usage still apply, and bills for premium images are still calculated by rounding up to the nearest usage increment.

Note: When you use premium images, Google is required to report the appropriate licensing details to the image provider(s). This information might include information about your Google account (such as the person or entity being billed, and the region or country registered to the account), details of the transaction (such as what product or service you have used, the corresponding Google SKU, or the date when you first used the product or service), and usage information (such as total hours of usage).

Price Model Update starting July 1, 2024.

Red Hat announced a price model update on RHEL and RHEL for SAP to all Cloud providers, including Google Cloud. Starting July 1, 2024, RHEL, RHEL for SAP, and the new RHEL 7 ELS license will be billed on a core-hour model.

Pricing before July 1, 2024

RHEL images:

• $0.06 USD/hour for instances with 4 or fewer vCPUs
• $0.13 USD/hour for instances with more than 4 vCPUs

RHEL 6 ELS images:

• $0.02 USD/hour for instances with 4 or fewer vCPUs
• $0.05 USD/hour for instances with more than 4 vCPUs

RHEL for SAP with HA and Update Services images:

• $0.10 USD/hour for instances with 4 or fewer vCPUs
• $0.225 USD/hour for instances with more than 4 vCPUs

Pricing as of July 1, 2024

RHEL:

• $0.0144 USD per core, per hour for instances with 8 or fewer vCPUs
• $0.0108 USD per core, per hour for instances with 9 to 127 vCPUs
• $0.0096 USD per core, per hour for instances with 128 vCPUs and more

RHEL for SAP:

• $0.0225 USD per core, per hour for instances with 1 to 8 vCPUs
• $0.01625 USD per core, per hour for instances with 9 to 127 vCPUs
• $0.01500 USD per core, per hour for instances with 128 vCPUs and more

RHEL 7 ELS add-on:

• $0.0084 USD per core, per hour for instances with 1 to 8 vCPUs
• $0.0060 USD per core, per hour for instances with 9 to 127 vCPUs
• $0.0050 USD per core, per hour for instances with 128 vCPUs and more

Calculating Costs

With this price update, RHEL and RHEL for SAP subscriptions costs will scale linearly with machine size. Instances with 12 vCPUs or less are expected to see equivalent or reduced costs; instances with more than 12 vCPUs are expected to see increased costs. Please use the tables below to estimate how this change will impact your RHEL and RHEL for SAP costs. Prices in this table are estimates only to the RHEL pricing update impact.

RHEL

RHEL for SAP

Committed Use Discounts for RHEL

By purchasing a 1-year commitment for RHEL images you can save up to 20% over the on-demand image price.

SLES images:

• $0.02 USD/hour for f1-micro and g1-small machine types
• $0.11 USD/hour for all other machine types

SLES for SAP images:

• $0.17 USD/hour for instances with 1 - 2 vCPUs
• $0.34 USD/hour for instances with 3 - 4 vCPUs
• $0.41 USD/hour for instances with 5 or more vCPUs

All SLES images are charged a 1 minute minimum. After 1 minute, SLES images are charged in 1 second increments.

You can purchase commitments and receive committed use discounts (CUDs) for your SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and SLES for SAP licenses. Because you commit to a minimum level of resource usage when you purchase your license commitment, you have to pay the agreed-upon prices for the duration of that commitment, even if your resource usage is lower than that minimum level. As a result, to maximize the benefit of your CUDs, ensure that you use all of your committed licenses and run VMs with those licenses for 100% time of your commitment's term. To learn more about CUDs for licenses and how to purchase a commitment, see Purchase commitments for licenses.

On-demand and discounted pricing for SLES images

By purchasing a 1- or 3-year commitment for SLES images you can save up to 79% over the on-demand image price.

On-demand and discounted pricing for SLES for SAP images

By purchasing a 1- or 3-year commitment for SLES SAP images you can save up to 63% over the on-demand image price.

The following sections outline the license cost for using Ubuntu Pro images on Compute Engine. When running VMs that use the premium Ubuntu Pro images, you incur license cost in addition to the regular cost of running the VM. For VM pricing, see VM instances pricing.

The license cost for running Ubuntu Pro VMs, per hour, on Compute Engine is calculated as follows:

(license cost for RAM per GB per hour) + (license cost for vCPU per hour)

Memory

License cost for memory is charged at one flat rate of $0.000127 per GB/hour in USD.

vCPU

License cost for vCPU varies by the number of vCPUs that the Ubuntu Pro VM has. The following table summarizes the license cost per hour in USD.

Ubuntu pro with attached GPUs license costs

The following sections outline only the license cost for using Ubuntu Pro images with attached GPUs on Compute Engine. When running VMs that use the premium Ubuntu Pro images with attached GPUs, you incur license cost for the premium image and a GPU license in addition to the regular cost of running the VM and the cost of the attached GPU.

• For VM cost, see VM instances pricing.
• For GPU cost, see GPU pricing.

The license cost of running Ubuntu VMs with attached GPU, per hour, is calculated as follows:

(license cost for RAM per GB per hour) + (license cost for vCPU per hour) + (license cost for GPU per hour)

The following table summarizes the per GPU license rates per month in USD for Ubuntu Pro VMs. The license fee varies based on the number of GPUs attached to the VM but is the same for all GPU models that are available on Compute Engine.

If you use a Compute Engine Windows Server image or you import a Windows Server image without bringing your own licenses, you are billed based on the machine types you use as follows:

• f1-micro and g1-small machine types: $0.023 USD/hour.
• All other machine types: $0.046 USD/hour per visible vCPU. For example, n2-highcpu-4, and n2-highmem-4 have 4 vCPUs, so are charged at $0.184 USD/hour (4 x $0.046 USD/hour).

Windows Server images are charged a 1 minute minimum. After 1 minute, Windows images are charged in 1 second increments.

For information about licensing for Windows Server images, see Microsoft licenses.

SQL Server images incur costs in addition to the cost for Windows Server images and the cost for the selected machine type.

• $0.399 USD per core/hour for SQL Server Enterprise
• $0.1200 USD per core/hour for SQL Server Standard
• $0.011 USD per core/hour for SQL Server Web
• No additional charge for SQL Server Express

Microsoft SQL Server licensing requires a core license to be assigned to each virtual CPU on your virtual machine instance, with a four core minimum for each instance. Instances with fewer than 4 vCPUs will be charged for 4 vCPUs to comply with these requirements.

Google recommends that you not use SQL Server images on f1-micro or g1-small machine types based on Microsoft's minimum hardware and software recommendations.

SQL Server images are charged a 1 minute minimum. After 1 minute, SQL Server images are charged in 1 second increments.

For information about licensing for SQL Server OS images, see Microsoft licenses.

Each VM has at least one disk attached to it. Each disk incurs a cost, described in this section. In addition, if you back up the disk with standard snapshots or instant snapshots separate charges apply.

All disk-related charges in this section are prorated based on a granularity of seconds. This includes all persistent disk types, snapshot storage, and Local SSD pricing.

For example, based off US pricing, a 200 GB standard Persistent Disk volume would cost $8.00 for the whole month. If you provisioned a 200 GB volume for only half a month, it would cost $4.00. Likewise, a 200 GB SSD Persistent Disk volume would cost $34.00 for the whole month. If you provisioned a 200 GB volume for only half a month, it would cost $17.00.

Provisioned disk space includes all used and unused space. If you provision a 200 GB disk, you are billed for that entire disk space, regardless of how you use it, until you relinquish it.

For disk pricing information and rates, see the following sections on this page:

• Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk pricing
• Disk snapshots
• Standard snapshot pricing
• Regional standard snapshots pricing
• Multi-regional standard snapshots pricing
• Network charges for standard snapshot creation and restoration
• Instant snapshots
• Local SSD pricing
• Asynchronous Replication

• Standard, SSD, and balanced Persistent Disks are priced by the amount of provisioned space per disk. For these disk types, I/O operations are included in the price for provisioned space. Since disk performance grows linearly with the size of your disk, consider your I/O needs when choosing the size of your disk.

You are billed for the total provisioned capacity of your Hyperdisk volumes until you delete them. You are charged per GiB per month. Additionally, you are billed for the following:

• Hyperdisk Balanced and Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability charge a monthly rate for the provisioned IOPS and provisioned throughput (in MBps) in excess of the baseline values of 3,000 IOPS and 140 MBps throughput.
• Hyperdisk Extreme charges a monthly rate based on the provisioned IOPS.
• Hyperdisk Throughput charges a monthly rate based on the provisioned throughput (in MBps).

For more information about the different types of persistent disk, see the Storage options.

After you successfully delete a persistent disk, you are no longer charged for that disk.

You can backup disks with standard, instant, and archive snapshots. Archive and standard snapshots are remote disk backups, while instant snapshots are local disk backups.

Unless otherwise specified, references to standard snapshots include archive snapshots.

All standard snapshots in a project incur monthly storage fees. Whenever you create or restore a standard snapshot, you might also incur network fees based on the storage location of the snapshot.

Note: Pricing changes were introduced for standard snapshots on October 1, 2022. For more information, see Announcement of upcoming pricing changes for disk snapshots.

Standard snapshots incur monthly storage charges as long as they exist in your project. Standard snapshots only incur charges for the total size of the snapshots. For example, if you only used 2 TiB of disk space on a 5 TiB disk, your snapshot size is charged for the resulting compressed storage of the 2 TiB that were used, rather than the full 5 TiB of provisioned disk space. Standard and archive snapshots are incremental snapshots, which contain only the data that has changed since the previous snapshot, providing for a generally lower cost for snapshot storage. When you delete a complete or incremental snapshot, some of its data may move to the next incremental snapshot in the snapshot chain. This additional data increases the storage cost because you are using more space in the storage system.

Standard snapshot storage charges, like disk-related charges, are prorated based on a granularity of seconds.

Starting on April 1, 2023, standard snapshot storage will have a minimum billing period of 1 hour. Archive snapshots are billed for a minimum of 90 days of storage, and also billed for retrieval charges when used to create a disk.

Network charges are billed under Compute Engine. Standard snapshot storage is compressed.

If you create or restore a standard snapshot that is stored in a different location than the disk, the data travels over the network between those locations and may incur network fees.

For example, if your disk is located in the us-central1 region, and you make a snapshot to us multi-region, or a different region such as us-west1, you will incur a network charge. A standard snapshot of this disk to the same us-central1 region would not incur a network charge.

Instant snapshots provide a near-instantaneous, point-in-time backup of a disk. They are ideal for protecting workloads from application-level data corruption, user error, or bad software upgrades. The point-in-time backups are read-only, frozen views of a disk or volume and serve as short-term, online backups. They are optimized for recovery scenarios where the zone and disk are intact but the data must be quickly restored.

Pricing is based on two components:

• A per-operation charge to create an instant snapshot.
• A per-GiB storage charge for differential data that has changed on the disk since the snapshot was taken. The price will be the same as that of the underlying storage.

Instant Snapshot operations in all regions are charged 0.05 USD per operation

Local SSD devices are charged for the amount of provisioned space per device for the lifetime of the VM that it is attached to. The prices for Local SSD disks differ depending on the region. For example, in the Iowa, Oregon, Taiwan, and Belgium regions, Local SSDs cost $0.080 per GB per month. As mentioned earlier, Local SSD charges are prorated to a granularity of seconds.

Local SSD disks can only be purchased in 375 GiB or 3,000 GiB increments, depending on the machine family type. The cost-per-month for a single device is the monthly rate multiplied by the size of the disk. For example, at a monthly rate of $0.080 per GiB and a single 375 GiB disk, the cost would be $30.00 per device per month. Actual data storage and usage are included in that price and there is no additional charge for local traffic between the virtual machine and the Local SSD device.

You can reserve Local SSD disks in a specific zone, with or without a commitment. Without a commitment, you pay normal on-demand prices. For committed-use discounted pricing for Local SSD disks, a reservation must be created when purchasing the commitment. For more information, see Reserving zonal resources.

Spot prices apply to Local SSD disks attached to Spot VMs (or preemptible VMs). Spot prices provide smaller discounts for Local SSD disks than for machine types and GPUs. Local SSD disks attached to Spot VMs are not eligible for other discounts.

Asynchronous Replication allows Compute Engine customers to enable disaster recovery protection for mission-critical workloads that require a low Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective. Async Replication automatically and periodically replicates data from a disk in a primary region to a disk in a secondary (failover) region, so that workloads can be recovered with minimal data loss and minimal downtime if a disaster occurs.

Pricing is based on the amount of provisioned data being protected, and the amount of data replicated over the network. There is no additional price for Compute Engine VMs to use Async Replication, and no additional Google Cloud resources such as dedicated replication VMs are required.

The Async Replication Protection SKUs for Asynchronous Replication apply to primary & secondary disks and are based on the provisioned capacity of the underlying disk. Replication Protection is charged while replication is active, i.e. beginning when disks.startAsyncReplication is called and stopping when disks.stopAsyncReplication is called. This SKU is metered based on GiB-month of the primary and secondary disks, with the price dependent on the location. Usage is metered each second.

Note that primary and secondary disks themselves are billed as ordinary disks based on their type, location, and provisioned size.

Additionally, for Hyperdisk, you are billed for the following:

• Hyperdisk Balanced and Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability charge a monthly rate for the provisioned IOPS and provisioned throughput (in MBps).
• Hyperdisk Extreme charges a monthly rate based on the provisioned IOPS

The Async Replication Inter-region Network SKUs meter the replicated data sent between regions. Network charges are applied in the project of the secondary (DR) disk. This SKU is metered based on GiB of network usage, with the price dependent on the location. Usage is metered each second.

If you import or create custom images in Compute Engine, these images incur a storage cost. The cost of these custom images depends on the location where you store the image. There are no network transfer fees for creating images, nor for creating disks from images.

The cost of using a machine image depends on the size of the machine image, and the location where it is stored.

There is also a one time network transfer fee if you are storing a machine image in a different location than the source VM, or if you create a VM from a machine image that is stored in a different location from the VM.