This document includes information about actions you can perform in Terra, which ones cost money, and which are free of charge. 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.
Please reference Overview: Controlling Cloud costs on Terra as a companion to this article.
Workspace infrastructure costs
This section provides information on workspace costs that are distinct from data storage and analysis costs. Scroll down to see the costs for data storage, and running an interactive analysis or workflow, below.
Viewing Workspaces
Viewing Terra GCP workspaces is free of charge, and you can browse preview versions of 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 GCP is free of charge. However, you will need to have access to a Terra Billing Project to assign to the new workspace. All GCP costs for actions in a workspace (data storage, data transfer out, and VM compute) will be paid through the assigned Billing Project. Data files in workspace storage (Google Bucket) are not copied and have no associated charge.
You will pay to store .ipynb files in cloned workspacesNote 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. The tables' infrastructure cost is included in the free Terra GCP infrastructure.
What is free to use
- Looking at data or the details of a file in a data table
- Copying data tables to a different workspace
- Downloading a file from Terra (in most cases, the costs for download are covered by the Billing Project of the workspace where the data files are stored. See Using Requester Pays workspaces/buckets for the exception).
What has a (hidden) cost
- Downloading files can incur costs for you if the Workspace bucket is a Requester Pays bucket.
- To learn more about how to reduce data transfer costs for data storage, see Configuring GCS buckets to prevent data transfer charges.
Data storage costs
Each workspace has two dedicated cloud storage resources.
- Workspace storage (Google Bucket)
- Laptop in the Cloud Persistent Disks (one per user per workspace)
Workspace storage (i.e., Google Bucket)
The cost for storage in a Workspace bucket depends on how much is in your bucket. Charges accrue daily, but Google Cloud Storage only bills at the end of the billing period. You can view unbilled usage on 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 transfer out charges)
If someone views or downloads the contents of files in your workspace bucket, the workspace Billing Project may accrue data transfer charges if the data moves outside 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.
You are only responsible for the storage costs of files in your Workspace bucket or Cloud Environment PD. 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 can reference files from an external bucket in your data table without paying, unless use files stored in a different region as input in a workflow analysis, or copy them to your Workspace bucket or Cloud Environment persistent disk.
Default bucket regions and cost
The default for Terra buckets is Autoclass storage in us-central-1, 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) Overview: Clou dEnvironment storage (detachable persistent disks). 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). This will surface the Cloud Environment configuration page (screenshot below).
What has a costA Cloud Environment virtual machine (VM) has three 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. |
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 Overview: Controlling Cloud costs on Terra.
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 How to troubleshoot and fix stalled workflows.