Breaking down a Google bill

Allie Cliffe
  • Updated

Find out how to interpret your Google bill and optimize your spend by aligning the costs you see (in GCP console) with actions performed in Terra.

For more details, see Overview: Terra costs and GCP cloud resources.

To see how to view cloud spend directly in Terra, See Displaying Google Cloud costs (Billing project owners).  

How to view detailed Google Cloud charges

Owners and admins of Google Cloud Billing accounts can access detailed billing reports at the Cloud Billing account and Google project level on Google Cloud console. For workspaces created after September 27, 2021, you can view how much of each service (i.e., data storage, VM) is used per month in the workspace.

1. Navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com/ and select the workspace Google project name from the dropdown at the top. The project name will have the format  <Terra-billing-project-name>--<workspace-name>

Screenshot of billing page in GCP console with arrow pointing to the Select workspace project field at the top

HINT: Finding the workspace projectTo make sure you are seeing the Google project associated with the workspace you're interested in, you can cross-reference with the Google ID, which you can find on the workspace dashboard under Workspace Information. 
Screenshot of workspace dashboard with the workspace Google Project ID at right under Cloud Information circled

2. In the Billing card on the right, select the View detailed charges link.

Screenshot of project details on GCP console with arrow pointing to the View detailed charges link at right in the Billing card.

Don't see any cost reporting info on GCP console? You need to have owner, admin or viewer permissions on the Cloud Billing account to see cost reports on GCP console. If what you see doesn't match the descriptions or screenshots below, that is likely because you do not have the right permission. 

3. In the Reports page, you can filter by time range, SKUs, services, projects, and more.
Screenshot of detailed cost breakdown on GCP View detailed charges link with options for filtering at right and SKU breakdowns below.

4. To view costs for a specific task, select the date range (on the right) and filter out storage costs by selecting Compute Engine (under Service). You can make a custom date range, too.

5. Running workflows and Interactive Analysis tasks (such as creating cloud environments) both use compute engine. If you perform multiple of these tasks on the same day, you will see all costs combined on your Google bill.  

Examples by use-case

Below are a few examples of typical costs for running a workflow and a Cloud Environment analysis, along with the corresponding Google cost report.

1. Joint Genotyping workflow in the Exome Analysis Pipeline

Exome Analysis Pipeline

Cost: $3.50

Breakdown of the Google bill

Screen_Shot_2021-09-03_at_2.33.28_PM.png

2. Running a Cloud Environment w/ default 50GB Persistent Disk

Cloud Environment components
Screenshot of Cloud environment configuration pane with 1 CPU of compute, 3.75GB of RAM, and a 50 GB persistent disk

Breakdown of the Google bill (Cloud Environment was active for 1 hour)

Screenshot of detailed billing for cloud environment use-case showing three SKUs with cost: the N1 core compute instance, the N1 RAM running in Americas, and PD storage

Pricing breakdown by SKU

To better predict the charges for a given configuration, use the GCP pricing calculator.

Below is a breakdown of SKUs on your Google bill, what they represent, their typical price, and the actions they correspond to in Terra. See the Google Cloud Platform SKUs for the complete list.

SKU

Meaning

Price

Action in Terra

Preemptible N1 Predefined Instance Core running in Americas

 

 

Preemptible N1 Predefined Instance Ram running in Americas

 

 

Preemptible Custom Instance Core running in Americas

 

 

Preemptible Custom Instance Ram running in Americas

 

When you use an Instance (a VM) on Google Cloud, you are charged based on how long you use the instance, the amount of virtual CPUs (Cores), and the amount of memoryRam).

The amount of cores and ram on a machine is often referred to as the "shape" of the machine.

Google Cloud also offers different machine families, each with a curated set of processor and hardware configurations.

N1 Predefined is one of these families

You can also create an instance with your own custom machine type. See vm-instance-pricing for more details. 

You also have the option to make your instance preemptible.

A preemptible VM is an instance you can create and run at a much lower price than normal instances. However, Compute Engine might stop (preempt) these instances if it requires access to those resources for other tasks.

Instances are run on physical machines in different data centers around the world, so location availability (like one running in Americas) is considered in pricing.

0.031611 USD per hour

 

 

 

 

0.004237 USD per gibibyte hour

 

 

 

 

0.00698 USD per hour

 

 

 

 

0.00698 USD per hour

 

 

Running a workflow

Launching a Cloud Environment

Multi-Region Standard Class A Operations

Each time you perform one of the Class A Operations listed here in operations-by-class, it is one count.

Ex. If you look at files in the data section of the workspace, it is performing an API call to show you what is in Google Bucket, which incurs a charge

0.005 USD per 1,000 count

Browsing files section in data tab

Running a workflow

Running a notebook

Viewing or downloading data from the browser

Storage PD Capacity

Standard Persistent Disk storage

0.00 USD (Free) per gibibyte month, for 0 to 30 gibibyte month, per month per account


0.04 USD per gibibyte month, for 30 gibibyte month and above, per month per account

Launching a Cloud Environment with persistent disk

Running a workflow
*since workflows run for a limited amount of time, the cost is typically negligible compared to runtime cost of the VM

External IP Charge on a Preemptible VM

For a VM to have external network access, it needs to have an external IP address. There is an additional charge for this. You could create a VM with no external network access to avoid this charge.  See network pricing for more details.

0.002 USD per hour

Running a workflow

Launching a Spark cluster

Standard Storage US Multi-region

Storing your data in a Google bucket will accrue charges based on your region.

0.026 USD per gibibyte month<

Storing files in workspace bucket

Network data transfer via Carrier Peering Network - Americas Based

 

 

You can use a non-Google service provider (CenturyLink, Verizon, etc) to access Google Workspace applications. This is not a part of Google Cloud technically, but there is a Google Cloud charge to transfer data out of Google, through the service provider and onto your infrastructure. This charge is known as "Network Data Transfer".

0.04 USD per gibibyte

Downloading files to local machine

Copying files from GCP to another cloud provider

Multi-Region Standard Class B Operations

Each time you perform one of the Class B Operations listed here in operations-by-class, it is one count.

0.004 USD per 10,000 count

Browsing files section in data tab

Running a workflow

Running a notebook

Viewing or downloading data from the browser

Network Google Ingress from Americas to Americas

Network Internet Ingress from APAC to Americas

Network Internet Ingress from Americas to Americas

Network Internet Ingress from China to Americas

Ingress is when data is transferred through the network and into Google. network ingress is free.

0.00 USD (Free) per gibibyte

Uploading files

Network Internet data transfer from Americas to Americas

Data stored in Americas in Google Cloud Platform, was downloaded from Americas

0.00 USD (Free) per gibibyte, for 0 to 1 gibibyte, per month per account

0.12 USD per gibibyte, for 1 to 1,024 gibibyte, per month per account

0.11 USD per gibibyte, for 1,024 to 10,240 gibibyte, per month per account

0.08 USD per gibibyte, for 10,240 gibibyte and above, per month per account

Downloading files to local machine

Copying files from GCP to another cloud provider

Running a workflow or cloud environment VM if the bucket is in a specific US region (like us-east), and downloaded to a workflow/ cloud environment  VM in a different US region (like us-west)

*Note that the default for Terra buckets is us-central-1 regional by default (data transfer is free to VMs in the default region).

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