Google Compute Engine (Linux VMs)
Sibling records disagree:
- verdict:
compute/gcp-computesays qualifies-with-caveat, compute/gcp-windows says paid-only
- Free allowance
- 1 non-preemptible e2-micro instance for the whole of each month in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, with 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk and 1 GB a month of outbound transfer from North America; the allowance is counted in hours, not instances
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- cardcard required, no phone
- Binding limit
- request-rate1 e2-micro instance's worth of hours a month, counted across every e2-micro in the three eligible US regions
- Evidence
- documented3 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-05checked 2026-11-04 (live); stale on 2026-12-05
| Free tier | 1 non-preemptible e2-micro instance for the whole of each month in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, with 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk and 1 GB a month of outbound transfer from North America; the allowance is counted in hours, not instances unit hours; metered on wall-clock |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
not stated |
| Identity | card 'You won't be charged until you activate your full paid account' and the $300 welcome credit require a payment method to activate the paid account; the free tier itself is available to an eligible customer, quoted from cloud.google.com/free read 2026-10-22 |
| Egress | 1 GB a month of outbound transfer from North America to all region destinations (excluding China and Australia) in the free tier; beyond it, standard network pricing applies free allowance: 1 GB a month from North America |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | unknown |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Evidence note | documented the Google Cloud free-tier list and the free-features document were both read on 2026-10-22. The free tier is a monthly usage allowance that does not expire, which is a different product from the USD 300 credit the record carried; the credit is a 90-day trial that sits beside it |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 3
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-02 | cloud.google.com/products/compute/pricing/general-purpose | not published |
| 2026-10-22 | cloud.google.com/products/compute/pricing/general-purpose | '1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM instance per month in one of the following US regions: Oregon, Iowa, South Carolina. 30 GB-months standard persistent disk. 1 GB of outbound data transfer from North America', and 'Your Free Tier e2-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance ... free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month', and 'GPUs and TPUs are not included in the Free Tier offer', quoted |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features | the Compute Engine free tier includes 1 GB of outbound transfer a month |
More fields 9
| keep rate | 1.0 |
|---|---|
| billing model | unclassified |
| shape | {"vcpu": 2,"ram": 1,"disk": 30,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": null,"note": "e2-micro: 2 vCPU on a shared core, 1 GiB, 30 GB standard persistent disk"} |
| session cap | {"wall_clock_min": null,"idle_reap_s": null,"restart_required": false,"note": "the allowance is the total hours in the month, so a single always-on e2-micro consumes all of it; the clock resets monthly, not on activity"} |
| free tier kind | allowance |
| granularity | {"min_billed_s": 60,"rounding_s": null} |
| burst x | 1.0 |
| ps | {"gib": 30,"price": "30 GB-months included, then standard PD rates","durability": "persistent disk","on_stop": true,"on_destroy": false,"retention": "while the disk exists"} |
| net | {"out": true,"in": true,"ports": "any","static_ip": false,"ipv6": false,"allowance": "1 GB a month outbound from North America"} |
Unknown values 8
- chaining: a source was read and is silent on this field
- interface: the access interface was not established
- limits note: a source was read and is silent on this field
- per object cap stated: a source was read and is silent on this field
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention stated: a source was read and is silent on this field
- tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field
Corrections
- 2026-10-22 Google Cloud's free tier is a recurring usage allowance, and the record priced it as a credit