Google Compute Engine Review
Google Compute Engine was founded as a VPS provider in 2008.
It is headquartered in the USA.
It offers VPS, Database, Storage and Networking hosting products.
- Australia
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- Finland
- Germany
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Netherlands
- Qatar
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
- United States
Quick Links
| Google Compute Engine plans specs and prices | Plans |
| Google Compute Engine instance types | Instance Types |
| How fast are Google Compute Engine servers? Check them out in the Screener | Screener |
| List of Google Compute Engine trials | Trials |
| Review CPU models found in Google Compute Engine trials | CPUs |
| Performance variations of Google Compute Engine VPS over the long term | Consistency |
| List of Google Compute Engine yabs.sh results | Yabs |
Google Compute Engine VPS Features
Features not included in the VPS price are marked as missing below.
| Feature | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly Billing | Yes | |
| DDOS Protection | Yes |
GCE uses the Andromeda network stack which features DDOS protection. |
| Backups | No |
Snapshots and Images are available but are charged extra as storage ($0.026 per GB per month as of 5/8/2016). |
| Control Panel | Builtin | |
| SSH Keys Setup | Yes | |
| Total Number of Datacenters | 20 | |
| Number of Datacenter Continents | 4 | |
| Monitoring Charts | Yes |
CPU, disk and network utilization. |
| Admin REST API | Yes | |
| Upgrade VPS from admin console | No | |
| Mobile Friendly UI | No | |
| Reverse DNS | No | |
| Accepted Forms of Payment | Credit Cards | |
| Hidden CPU Model | Yes | |
| Affiliate Program | No | |
| IPv6 support | Yes | |
| Firewall | No | |
| Shelving | Yes |
"A stopped instance does not incur charges, but all of the resources that are attached to the instance continue to incur charges.": https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/stop-start-instance |
Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Large catalog of available features.
- Datacenter locations all over the world.
Weaknesses
- Disk IO is throttled on small storage volumes.
Google Compute Engine Extra Services
In addition to features included in VPS plans, Google Compute Engine also sells the services marked green in the following table:
| Backups | Block storage | Object storage | Load balancer |
| Floating IP addresses | Team Management | Managed databases | Serverless |
| DDoS protection | Kubernetes | GPU instances | Private network |
VPS Instance Provisioning Time
For each Google Compute Engine VPS trial, we measured how long it took to provision the server from the moment it was ordered to the moment it accepted SSH connections.
See also VPS provisioning times for all providers.
| Average Provisioning Time | Min Provisioning Time | Max Provisioning Time | Number of VPS Samples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 78s | 35s | 160s | 3 |
Control Panel Screenshots
Cloud Storage Prices
For a comparison of storage features and prices from all providers, please check the Cloud Storage Prices page.
| Storage Type | Price / GB / month | Description | Restriction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block | $0.080 |
Hyperdisk volumes are network storage for Compute Engine, with configurable performance and volumes that can be dynamically resized. They offer substantially higher performance, flexibility and efficiency compared to Persistent Disk. Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability (Preview) can synchronously replicate data between disks located in two zones, providing protection if a zone becomes unavailable. Google Compute Engine block storage |
|
| Block | $0.110 |
Persistent Disk volumes provide high-performance and redundant network storage. Each Persistent Disk volume is striped across hundreds of physical disks. By default, VMs use zonal Persistent Disk, and store your data on volumes located within a single zone, such as us-west1-c. Google Compute Engine block storage |
|
| Snapshots | $0.023 |
GCE snapshots are incremental and stored in "Cloud Storage" (object storage)
Google Compute Engine snapshots storage |
|
| Object | $0.023 |
Object storage is called "Cloud Storage" at Google. Nearline and Coldline storage are also available at lower prices and speeds. Data transfer and operation fees are extra. Google Compute Engine object storage |
Standard Storage. First 5GB free. |
Network Bandwidth Prices
These are the network bandwidth prices charged by Google Compute Engine for outbound transfers from VPS to the internet.
For a comparison of bandwidth prices from all providers, go to the Network Bandwitdh Prices page.
| Description | Price / GB |
|---|---|
|
Pricing model: Allowance Then Charged
(the provider gives a free bandwidth allowance with each server. Bandwidth above the free allowance is charged by the provider.)
Free allowance: 0 GB / month
(for a 2 core 4GB instance or closest available)
Product range: Premium tier
Transfer pool: yes
The Network Service Tiers Premium Tier leverages Google's premium backbone to carry traffic to and from your external users. The public internet is usually only used between the user and the closest Google network ingress point.
Google Compute Engine networking |
Between 0TB and 1TB: $0.120/GB Between 1TB and 10TB: $0.110/GB Above 10TB: $0.080/GB |
Google Compute Engine Instance Types and Plans
All Google Compute Engine instance types
Note: All VPS prices reported at VPSBenchmarks are for one month without any further commitment and before promotions unless noted otherwise. The IPv4 charge is added to the VPS monthly price in case the provider doesn't include it by default.
| Plan | Number of CPU cores | RAM | Storage | Monthly Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: N2 Standard |
N2 machine series has up to 128 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory per vCPU, and is available on the Intel Ice Lake and Cascade Lake CPU platforms.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C2 Standard |
The C2 series enables the highest performance per core and the highest frequency for compute-bound workloads using Intel 3.9 GHz Cascade Lake processors.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/compute-optimized-machines
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: N2D Standard |
N2D machine series has up to 224 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory per vCPU, and is available on second generation AMD EPYC Rome and third generation AMD EPYC Milan platforms.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types
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| n2d-standard-2 | 2 | 8.0GB | 40GB | $63.35 / month |
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C2D Standard |
The C2D machine series provides the largest VM sizes and are best-suited for high-performance computing (HPC). They use the third generation AMD EPYC Milan platform
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/compute-optimized-machines
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| c2d-standard-2 | 2 | 8.0GB | 40GB | $73.08 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: E2 Standard |
The E2 machine series has a predefined CPU platform, running either an Intel processor or the second generation AMD EPYC Rome processor. E2 offers 2 vCPUs for short periods of bursting.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: E2 Shared cores |
Unlike predefined machine types and custom machine types, shared-core machine types are not billed on their individual resources. Each machine type has a defined price for both vCPUs and memory. E2 shared-core machines with committed use discount contracts consume cores in the following manner:
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/vm-instance-pricing#general-purpose_machine_type_family
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| e2-small | 2 | 2.0GB | 40GB | $16.23 / month |
| e2-medium | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $24.46 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: N2 High memory |
N2 machine series has 8 GB of memory per vCPU, up to 128 vCPUs, and is available on the Intel Ice Lake and Cascade Lake CPU platforms.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-purpose-machines#n2-high-mem
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C3 High CPU |
The C3 high CPU instances are powered by the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor Sapphire Rapids CPU platform and feature 2GB RAM per vCPU.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/introducing-c3-machines-with-googles-custom-intel-ipu
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| c3-highcpu-4 | 4 | 8.0GB | 80GB | $139.45 / month |
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C4 High CPU |
C4 VMs are powered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Emerald Rapids) and Titanium. The C4 machine series is designed to deliver price-performance and enterprise-grade reliability along with a maintenance experience for your most demanding workloads. Appropriate workloads include web and app serving, game servers, databases and caches, video streaming, data analytics, network appliances, and CPU-based ML inference.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-purpose-machines#c4_series
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| c4-highcpu-2 | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $66.19 / month |
| Family: General Purpose Instance Type: N4 Standard |
N4 is powered by the 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (code-named Emerald Rapids). N4 offers a sustained, all-core turbo frequency of 2.9 GHz, 640 GB of DDR5 memory, and up to 50 Gbps of standard network bandwidth.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-purpose-machines
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| n4-standard-8 | 8 | 32.0GB | 0GB | $276.73 / month |
| Family: General Purpose Instance Type: C4 Standard |
C4 is powered by the 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (code-named Emerald Rapids). C4 offers a sustained, all-core turbo frequency of 3.1 GHz, 1.5 TB of DDR5 memory, and supports up to 200 Gbps of per VM Tier_1 networking performance.
Provider page for instance type:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-purpose-machines
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| c4-standard-8 | 8 | 30.0GB | 0GB | $288.59 / month |
| Instance Type: Other |
No description
Provider page for instance type:
/hosters/google_compute_engine
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| g1-small | 1 | 1.7GB | 10GB | $13.13 / month |
| n1-standard-1 | 1 | 3.75GB | 20GB | $27.67 / month |
| t2d-standard-1 | 1 | 4.0GB | 20GB | $34.24 / month |
| e2-highcpu-2 | 2 | 2.0GB | 0GB | $36.11 / month |
| n1-highcpu-2 (Off rankings) | 2 | 1.8GB | 20GB | $36.23 / month |
| n2-highcpu-2 | 2 | 2.0GB | 0GB | $41.87 / month |
| n1-standard-2 (Off rankings) | 2 | 7.5GB | 10GB | $48.55 / month |