All Google Cloud costs in Terra are calculated per workspace and paid via the Terra Billing project assigned to the workspace when it's created. 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. This document also includes information on the actions you can perform in Terra, which ones cost money, and which are free of charge.
Please reference Understanding and controlling Cloud costs as a companion to this article.
Workspace infrastructure costs
This section describes workspace costs separate from data storage and analysis costs (see costs for data storage, and running an interactive analysis or workflow, below).
Viewing Workspaces
Viewing workspaces is free of charge, and you can browse Showcase workspaces without creating a Terra account. Viewing other public (non-Showcase) workspaces or the data library requires you to register for a free Terra account. See instructions for setting up an account on Terra here.
Cloning Workspaces
Cloning or creating workspaces in Terra is free of charge, although you will need to have access to a Terra Billing project to assign to the new workspace. When you do work in a workspace, all GCP costs will be paid through the assigned billing project.
You will pay to store .ipynb files
Note that if you are cloning a workspace with notebooks, the notebook files (i.e. ipynb files) are automatically copied along with the workspace and stored in the new Workspace bucket. You are charged for the storage of these copied files (See the section on Workspace storage (i.e., Google Bucket below). Other bucket contents, such as workflow outputs and uploaded data, are not copied to a cloned workspace.
Storing and maintaining Data Tables
Data tables are spreadsheet-like files integrated into the workspace and workflows. Their cost is included in the free Terra infrastructure.
What is free to use
Looking at the details of a file in a data table is free. Copying data tables to a different workspace is also free. In most cases, downloading a file from Terra is free and the costs for download are covered by the billing project assigned to the workspace where the data files are stored (in the workspace bucket).
What has a cost
Downloading files can incur costs for you if the Workspace bucket is a requester pays bucket. Workspaces with requester pays buckets will prompt you to select a workspace to charge for accessing the data (the egress charges will be covered by the workspace Terra Billing project).
Popup screen for downloading files from a Requester Pays bucket
To learn more about how to reduce egress costs for data storage, see Configuring GCS buckets to prevent egress charges.
Data storage costs
There are two dedicated cloud storage resources associated with your workspace: workspace storage and cloud environment persistent disks.
Workspace storage (i.e., Google bucket)
Storage in a Workspace bucket has a cost that varies depending on how much of the bucket you are using. Charges accrue daily, but Cloud Storage bills you only at the end of the billing period. You can view unbilled usage in your workspace project's billing page in the Google Cloud Console. For more detailed information, see Google Cloud Documentation.
What has an indirect cost (i.e., data egress charges)
If someone views or downloads the contents of files in your workspace bucket, the workspace Billing project may accrue egress charges if the data moves outside of the bucket Cloud Storage region(s).
For more details, see https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing.
What is free?
Uploading data to a workspace bucket (for example through the "Files" section of a workspace) does not incur upload costs. However, the new data in the bucket will start to accrue storage fees immediately.
If you upload a workspace data table (i.e., TSV or TXT file), you will not pay for anything related to the TSV or any of the file paths in your table. You are only responsible for the storage costs of files in your Workspace bucket. You can reference files from an external bucket in your data table without paying, unless you copy files to your Workspace bucket or Cloud Environment persistent disk, or use them as input in a workflow analysis.
Default bucket regions and cost
The default for Terra buckets is multi-region US standard storage, but other options are available. You can find the region(s) as well as an estimated monthly storage cost (Est. $/Month) in the Workspace Information in the right column of the Dashboard.
For more information on Google Cloud Storage pricing, see https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing.
Cloud Environment Persistent Disk
Cloud Environments come with an (optional) detachable persistent disk. When you create a Cloud Environment using the default options, you automatically get 50G of VM persistent disk storage. You can choose a different persistent disk size in the Cloud Environment setup form.
You pay a fixed amount per month for the disk you choose, until you delete it (i.e., whether or not the Cloud Environment VM is running). The cost for the default 50G disk is $2.00/month.
Interactive Analysis costs
Interactive analysis apps such as Jupyter notebooks, Galaxy, RStudio, or the workspace terminal all run on the Cloud Environment VM, which has a cloud cost while the cloud environment is running.
Finding the Cloud Environment costs
You can see the current interactive analysis costs at any time by clicking the Jupyter, RStudio, or Galaxy logo in the right sidebar and clicking the Settings button (gear icon).
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What has a costA Cloud Environment virtual machine (VM) has 3 separate billable components: a VM, a boot disk, and a detachable persistent disk. When creating a Cloud Environment, you can see the cost per hour based on the CPUs, Memory(GB), and disk size you choose. As you increase CPU, memory, or storage, the cost of the Cloud Environment will increase. You will pay the VM cost/hour as long as the VM is running, whether or not it is performing calculations! Terra has a built-in autopause feature to prevent runaway costs if you go away from the Cloud Environment and it is no longer running an analysis. See Preventing runaway costs with Cloud Environment autopause to learn more. You can delete the VM and keep the detachable persistent disk. When you do that, you continue to pay for the detachable persistent disk.
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For more information on how to find the optimal compute and disk size, see Your interactive analysis VM (Cloud Environment).
Pause a cloud environment to reduce costs
If you pause your cloud environment, you will pay a nominal fee (<$0.01/hr) for the VM. Terra has a built-in autopause feature to prevent runaway costs if you go away from the Cloud Environment and it is no longer running an analysis. See Preventing runaway costs with Cloud Environment autopause to learn more.
You continue to pay for the detachable persistent disk at the normal rate ($0.04 per GB per month for the default PD). For more information about what you pay for when you pause a VM, see the Google Cloud Documentation.
Workflows costs
Running workflows costs money for Google Cloud resources including VMs and associated disks. Service prices vary, and you will be charged according to what services you use and for how long.
Options to reduce workflow storage and compute costs
Built-in cost-savings features to reduce your workflow costs
To learn more about controlling compute costs, see the "Compute" section in Understanding and controlling cloud costs.
Note about workflow cost variability The cost of running a specific workflow may be slightly different each time due to variations in the performance of the compute resources.
If you notice a significant difference in run-times or costs, however, you might be up against a resource quota limit. See Google Cloud quotas - what are they and how do you request more?
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 look at how much of each service (i.e. data storage, VM) you 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>.
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. 
2. In the Billing card on the right, select the View detailed charges link.
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.
4. To see how much a specific task costs, 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 the costs all 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
Cost: $3.50
Breakdown of the Google bill
2. Running a Cloud Environment w/ default 50GB Persistent Disk
Cloud Environment components
Breakdown of the Google bill (Cloud Environment was active for 1 hour)
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 actions they correspond to in Terra. See the Google Cloud Platform SKUs for the complete list.
|
SKU |
Meaning |
Price |
Action in Terra |
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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
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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
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Run a workflow Launch a Cloud Environment |
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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 data section of 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 Run a workflow Run a notebook View or download data from the browser |
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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 |
>Launch a cloud environment with persistent disk Run a workflow |
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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 |
Run a workflow Launch 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 |
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Network Egress via Carrier Peering Network - Americas Based
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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 Egress". |
0.04 USD per gibibyte |
Downloading files to local machine
Copying files from GCP to another cloud provider |
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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 Run a workflow Run a notebook View or download data from the browser |
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">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 |
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Network Internet Egress 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) *This is very unlikely however as nearly 100% of all terra buckets are US multi-regional (which means egress is free to VMs in any US region). |