Cloud Service Costs Breakdown
Overview
In order to support transparency and strategic decision-making, this section provides a detailed breakdown of the estimated costs associated with various services used across our platform. Each service plays a critical role in maintaining security, performance, and reliability.
The goal of this guide is to help teams:
- Understand the cost structure of core cloud services.
- Align service usage with budgeting and optimization goals.
- Recognize the value proposition of each service to make informed architectural and operational decisions.
- Leverage free tiers and cost-efficient practices to optimize spending.
The table below lists each service with its associated cost estimation, example usage scenarios, and a summary of its use case and benefits.
| Service Name | Cost Estimation | Example | Use Case and Value Proposition |
|---|---|---|---|
| VM Manager (for patching) | $0.003 per hour per VM (for active OS config agent) | Running 150 VMs with active OS Config agents for a month (108,000 VM-hours): Total = 0.003 × 108,000 = $324/month Note: 74,400 hours/month are free. |
Ensures timely OS patching and configuration updates. Helps maintain security compliance and reduces manual admin overhead. Ideal for managed VM fleets. |
| Cloud Logging | $0.50 per GiB of log data ingested | Ingesting 500 GiB/month → Total = 500 × 0.50 = $250/month Note: 50 GiB/month free tier. |
Enables observability and debugging across services. Valuable for diagnosing production issues, auditing, and monitoring. Use filters to manage cost. |
| Binary Authorization | $12/month per GKE cluster Free for Cloud Run |
Using 3 GKE clusters → Total = 3 × $12 = $36/month | Protects your software supply chain by enforcing signature-based policies. Prevents unauthorized code from being deployed to GKE environments. |
| Artifact Registry | $0.10 per GB per month | 8.6 GB across 5 repositories: Billable usage = 8.6 – 0.5 = 8.1 GB → Total = 8.1 × $0.10 = $0.81/month |
Secure and scalable storage for container images and other artifacts. Reduces latency for builds/deployments and integrates with CI/CD workflows. |
| KMS (Key Management Service) | $0.06 per active key version | 1 key with 4 versions → Total = 4 × $0.06 = $0.24/month | Protects data using encryption keys. Supports automatic rotation, auditing, and integration with other Google Cloud services. Centralized control of key usage. |
| Monitoring | Ingestion: $0.2580 per MiB Uptime Checks: $0.30/1,000 Synthetic Monitors: $1.20/1,000 |
550 MiB ingested → 550 × $0.2580 = $141.90/month 2,000 uptime checks → $0.60/month 200 synthetic executions → $0.24/month Free tiers available. |
Provides visibility into app health and performance. Supports alerting and dashboarding. Synthetic monitors simulate user activity for proactive issue detection. |
| Alerting | $0.10/month per condition $0.35/million time series |
20 alerting policies with 1 condition each → 20 × $0.10 = $2/month 1M time series → $0.35/month Total = $7/month |
Sends real-time notifications based on metric anomalies or thresholds. Helps ensure service reliability and quick response to incidents. |
| Cloud Armor Policy | $1 per rule per month | 41 rules → $41/month 52 rules → $52/month 20 rules → $20/month |
Provides DDoS protection and access control for your web applications. Enables WAF rules to mitigate threats at the edge before they reach your backend services. |
For any adjustments, cost concerns, or optimization strategies, please contact the platform support team by raising a ticket from here.