Google cloud platform free tier limits from compute engine

Question

In GCP, it is not notified when a virtual machine of with resources higher than the free tier limit is created. An error message of following pattern arises in the notification. So, what is the maximum allowed resourced for Google cloud platform virtual machine?

Create VM instance "instance-2" and its boot disk "instance-2" Quota 'C2_CPUS' exceeded. Limit: 0.0 in region asia-south1.

Solution 1

You can found more information at the documentation Google Cloud Free Tier:

The Google Cloud Free Tier has two parts:

• A 3-month(previously 12) free trial with $300 credit to use with any Google Cloud services.
• Always Free, which provides limited access to many common Google Cloud resources, free of charge.

At the section 12-month, $300 free trial you can find Program coverage details:

Your free trial credit applies to all Google Cloud resources, with the following exceptions:

• You can't have more than 8 cores (or virtual CPUs) running at the same time.
• You can't add GPUs to your VM instances.
• You can't request a quota increase. For an overview of Compute Engine quotas, see Resource quotas.
• You can't create VM instances that are based on Windows Server images.

You must upgrade your account to perform any of the actions in the preceding list.

In addition, have a look at the End of the free trial:

The free trial ends when you use all of your credit, or after 12 months, whichever happens first. At that time, the following conditions apply:

• You must upgrade to a paid account to continue using Google Cloud.
• All resources you created during the trial are stopped.
• Any data you stored in Compute Engine is lost.
• Your account enters a 30-day grace period, during which you can recover resources and data you stored in any Google Cloud services during the trial period.
• You might receive a message stating that your account has been canceled, which only indicates that your account has been suspended to prevent charges.

and at the Recovering data:

Caution: There is no automated way to recover data that you used on VM instances you created with Compute Engine. You must manually export any data that you want to keep from your Compute Engine VM instances before the trial period ends.

I do recommend you to upgrade your account before free trial ends.

Solution 2

As written in the documentation:

Compute Engine
1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM instance per month in one of the following US regions:.

• Oregon: us-west1
• Iowa: us-central1
• South Carolina: us-east1

30 GB-months HDD. 5 GB-month snapshot storage in the following regions:.

• Oregon: us-west1
• Iowa: us-central1
• South Carolina: us-east1
• Taiwan: asia-east1
• Belgium: europe-west1

1 GB network egress from North America to all region destinations (excluding China and Australia) per month Your Free Tier e2-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance. Each month, eligible use of all of your e2-micro instances is free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month. Usage calculations are combined across the supported regions.

• Google Cloud Free Tier does not include external IP addresses.

• Compute Engine offers discounts for sustained use of virtual machines. Your Free Tier use doesn't factor into sustained use.

• GPUs and TPUs are not included in the Free Tier offer. You are always charged for GPUs and TPUs that you add to VM instances.

NB: This is subject to changes, check the link for up-to-date information.

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Step-by-Step guide to create a free instance:

Create instance

Now go create the instance at https://console.cloud.google.com/compute/instancesAdd

• region: us-east1 or one of the region indicated in the documentation.
• Select General Purpose -> N2 -> e2-micro. You will see "Your first 744 hours of e2-micro instance usage are free this month"
• Select Boot disk -> public image -> ubuntu -> 20.04LS -> boot disk type: Standard persistent disk (HDD) -> size 30gb (or as per documentation)
• Allow http and https traffic (or don't check the boxes, if you don't intend to use port 80 and 443)
• Click on Create

You can check "view billing report" to make sure you did it right.

Comments

[Serhii Rohoza]

Recently f1-micro instances were replaced with e2-micro instances within Free Tier docs.

[Lukas Lewandowski]

Did they also remove "Your first 744 hours of f1-micro instance usage are free this month"? or I am doing something wrong?

[Samaksh Gupta]

@LukasLewandowski Hey did you find anything? I am also not getting "Your first 744 hours of f1-micro instance usage are free this month" message..

[Lukas Lewandowski]

@SamakshGupta nope, I tried e2-micro and I got charged after launching it for a minute or soo

[Henrique Bruno]

Any free alternative as Compute Engine doesn't seem to be free anymore?

[Lucas Montenegro Carvalhaes]

Same here. Seems google advertising is either fake or misleading.

[Antonin GAVREL]

f1 were replaced by e2 for the free tier, see first comment from Serhii. I edited my answer as well

[Dzmitry Dranitski]

"Your first 744 hours of e2-micro instance usage are free this month" text is not showing anymore, which is frustrating. But folks say that you will not be charged for free tier machines started. Please take a look at this ticket googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Cloud-Hub/GCP-free-tier-problem/‌​m-p/…

[Dzmitry Dranitski]

@HenriqueBruno ypu can consider trying Oracle Cloud which has surprisingly good free tier.