Google Cloud Discounts

Google Cloud Discounts: Sustained and Committed Use Discounts

Google Cloud’s devotion to providing affordable Compute Engine services is reflected in their customer-oriented discount model. This model allows customers to cut the cost of spending on Compute Engine’s services and purchase only the resources they need. It is so flexible that it varies across different types of virtual machine instances set up by the customer and the duration these resources are used. Automation separates this model into two versions: sustained and committed use discounts. 

Sustained Use (Google Cloud) Discounts 

This version is set by default and is reflected in the monthly billing process. The discount is reset at the beginning of each month. After approximately a week, every minute preceding this period will automatically be assigned a higher discount directly proportional to the duration a given Compute Engine resource is used. This applies also for all subsequent weeks. To optimize your utilization of this discount, create your virtual machine (VM) instances at the beginning of the month.
The discount rates are not exclusive across all of Compute Engine’s offerings. Compute Engine has separated the different types of VMs and memory eligible to receive different sizes of discounts. When you purchase the general-purpose N1 predefined and custom types  VMs, GPUs, and sole tenant nodes, you can get a deal as high as 30% off your monthly billing. The N2 and N2D variants alongside GPUs are subject to less discount (20%).

Committed Use (Google Cloud) Discounts

Contrary to sustained use discounts, Compute Engine does not automatically grant you committed use discounts. To get this type of Google Cloud discount, Compute Engine permits you to buy a committed use contract agreeing to pay for this service for a given period (1 – 3 years) and in turn receive an even higher discount on your purchase. 

If you can foresee the resources that your business’ workloads require, committed use discounts are ideal for you. Suppose you need only 8 cores; Compute Engine allows you to only purchase this number of cores to avoid paying for what you will not use. Committed use discounts recommendations provide you with options to augment your usage of these discounts by analyzing your spending on Compute Engine’s memory and CPU offerings. The discount rates are profound and can go as far as 70% depending on the type of computing resource you purchase. After purchasing Compute Engine’s services via committed use contracts, your monthly billing will still be subject to sustained use discounts, except for the VM types that are not eligible. Once you purchase committed use contracts, the resources will be billed even when you do not use them. 

For every machine type, different committed use discounts exist. If you are using a memory-optimized machine type, you will have to purchase a committed use contract that is different from when you use an accelerator-optimized one. The same applies to GPUs. Both sustained and committed use discounts are limited to VM types set up via Compute Engine, Dataproc, and Google Kubernetes Engine. Suppose you are only using VMs created using Dataflow and App Engine Flexible environment or E2 and A2 Machine types; these discounts will not apply to you. Your projects are not eligible for these discounts when they are on the free tier credit or lack a payment history. These discounts are purchased and billed on a regional basis.