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Google Compute Engine Cost Calculator
Estimate your Compute Engine bill. Choose a machine type, set how many you run and for how many hours, add disk, and see the monthly cost with a type comparison.
Estimated monthly cost
$0
Compute cost—
Storage cost—
Cost per instance—
On-demand hourly (each)—
Annual estimate—
What the Google Compute Engine Cost Calculator does
Compute Engine is Google Cloud's virtual machine service, where you rent instances by the second with a one minute minimum. Cost depends on the machine type, how many you run and for how long, plus persistent disk storage. Compute Engine also applies automatic sustained use discounts for instances that run most of the month, and committed use discounts cut rates further.
This Compute Engine cost calculator multiplies your instance count by the hourly rate and run hours, adds persistent disk, and compares machine types so you can right size. A full month running 24/7 is 730 hours, and the e2 family offers the best price for general workloads.
Heads up on pricing. The rates built into this tool are public list estimates for July 2026 and can change without notice. Providers also offer batch discounts, prompt caching and volume tiers that lower real costs, so treat the output as a planning estimate, not a quote.
The formula
compute cost = instances × hourly rate × hours per month
disk cost = persistent disk GB × price per GB
total = compute + disk
disk cost = persistent disk GB × price per GB
total = compute + disk
Worked example
Two e2-medium instances at $0.0335 an hour for 730 hours cost 2 × $0.0335 × 730 = about $49. Add 30 GB of standard persistent disk at $0.04 per GB for $1.20, so about $50 a month before sustained use discounts.
Ways to lower your cloud costs
- Right size resources. Pick the smallest instance, memory or capacity that still meets your performance target.
- Commit to steady load. Reserved instances, savings plans and committed use discounts cut rates sharply for predictable workloads.
- Use serverless for spiky traffic. Scale-to-zero services mean you pay nothing while there are no requests.
- Tier cold storage. Move rarely accessed data to cheaper classes such as Glacier, Coldline or Archive.
- Cut data transfer. A CDN and keeping traffic within a single region reduce the egress charges that quietly grow with scale.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a Compute Engine VM cost?
An e2-medium is about $0.0335 an hour, roughly $24 a month if always on, before sustained use discounts. Larger n2 and c2 types cost more. Pick a type above.
What are sustained use discounts?
Automatic discounts that lower the rate for instances running a large share of the month, applied without any commitment. Committed use discounts save more for steady load.
How many hours in a month for a VM?
730 hours for a 24/7 instance. Stopping VMs when idle reduces billed hours and cost proportionally.
How do I lower Compute Engine costs?
Use e2 machines for general workloads, commit to steady usage for a discount, use spot VMs for fault tolerant jobs, and stop idle instances.
Are these rates current?
They are July 2026 on-demand estimates before discounts and vary by region. Confirm on the Google Cloud pricing page.