Google Cloud Always Free tier: the limits that matter by product
Every Google Cloud Always Free limit in 2026 by product: the e2-micro VM, 5 GB of Cloud Storage, 2 million Cloud Run requests and 1 TiB of BigQuery.
If you want something on Google Cloud that stays free after the $300 trial is gone, this is the list. The Always Free tier gives every billing account a fixed monthly allowance on more than 20 products, and it has no end date. The headline items are one e2-micro VM, 5 GB of regional Cloud Storage, 2 million Cloud Run requests, 2 million Cloud Run functions invocations and 1 TiB of BigQuery query processing per month. The catch is in the regions and the units, which is why we list each limit exactly as Google states it.
Every number below was checked on Google’s “Free Google Cloud features and trial offer” page on November 2, 2026. Google revises that table a few times a year, so treat anything older than a quarter as suspect. For the trial credit that runs alongside the free tier, see the free trial guide; for every other Google program, the free credits hub.
What you’re actually getting
The free tier isn’t a plan you enroll in. It’s a set of usage-based discounts applied automatically to any billing account in good standing, trial or paid. In the cost table report, free tier usage appears as a credit of type DISCOUNT, and it isn’t charged against the $300 trial credit.
Three rules apply across every product. Limits are monthly and don’t roll over, so an unused 1 TiB of BigQuery in October doesn’t become 2 TiB in November. Limits are per billing account unless the table says per project. And usage above a limit is billed at the normal rate with no warning other than the budget alerts you set yourself. Products from other providers on the same footing are compared on our free tiers page.
Compute, containers and serverless
| Product | Always Free limit per month | Region rule |
|---|---|---|
| Compute Engine | 1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM, 30 GB-months standard persistent disk, 1 GB outbound from North America | us-west1 (Oregon), us-central1 (Iowa) or us-east1 (South Carolina) |
| Cloud Run (request-based billing) | 2 million requests, 360,000 GB-seconds of memory, 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 1 GB outbound from North America | Any region |
| Cloud Run functions | 2 million invocations, 400,000 GB-seconds, 200,000 GHz-seconds, 5 GB outbound | Any region |
| App Engine (Standard only) | 28 hours per day of F1 instances, 9 hours per day of B1 instances, 1 GB per day outbound | Any region |
| Google Kubernetes Engine | One Autopilot or zonal Standard cluster with no cluster management fee | Any region |
| Cloud Build | 2,500 build-minutes on e2-standard-2 | Any region |
| Cloud Shell | Free access with 5 GB of persistent disk | Not applicable |
The e2-micro allowance is the closest thing Google offers to a free VPS, and Google measures it in time rather than instances. Each month, eligible use of all your e2-micro instances is free until the combined hours equal the hours in that month. One VM running around the clock fits. Two VMs running around the clock means the second one is billed. GPUs and TPUs are never free, and anything the table doesn’t name, such as egress beyond 1 GB, is billed at list price.
Cloud Run’s free quota is enough to host a low-traffic API or a static site indefinitely. The 360,000 GB-seconds figure means a 512 MB instance can serve roughly 200 hours of request time a month before billing starts. The GKE allowance covers the cluster fee only; the nodes underneath an Autopilot or Standard cluster are billed as Compute Engine resources.
Storage and databases
| Product | Always Free limit per month | Region rule |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Storage | 5 GB-months regional Standard storage, 5,000 Class A operations, 50,000 Class B operations, 100 GB outbound from North America | us-east1, us-west1 and us-central1 only, combined |
| Firestore | 1 GiB storage per project, 50,000 reads, 20,000 writes and 20,000 deletes per day per project, 10 GiB outbound | Any region |
| BigQuery | 1 TiB of query processing, 10 GiB of active storage | Any region |
| Artifact Registry | 0.5 GB of storage | Any region |
| Cloud Source Repositories | 5 users per billing account, 50 GB storage, 50 GB outbound | Not applicable |
| Datastream | 100 GiB of change data capture per billing account, AlloyDB or Spanner to BigQuery only | Any region |
Cloud Storage is the most common surprise bill on this page. The 5 GB applies only to buckets in the three named US regions, and it’s one combined allowance, not 5 GB per region. A bucket in us-east4 or a multi-region US bucket pays full price from the first byte. Class A operations, which include writes and bucket listings, cap at 5,000 a month, so a backup script that uploads thousands of small files will blow through it in a night.
BigQuery’s 1 TiB of queries and 10 GiB of storage cover most analytics side projects. The limit is on bytes processed, so a SELECT * over a 200 GB table five times burns the whole allowance. Firestore’s limits are per project and per day, which is friendlier than a monthly cap for apps with bursty traffic.
Messaging, security and operations
| Product | Always Free limit per month |
|---|---|
| Pub/Sub | 10 GiB of messages |
| Secret Manager | 6 active secret versions, 10,000 access operations, 3 rotation notifications |
| Cloud Key Management Service | 100 active key versions and 10,000 cryptographic operations, Autokey-created keys only |
| Google Cloud Observability | 50 GiB of logs per project, non-chargeable metrics, first 1 million time series read through the Monitoring API |
| Workflows | 5,000 internal steps, 2,000 external HTTP calls |
| Cloud Deploy | First active delivery pipeline per billing account |
| Security Command Center | Standard tier |
| reCAPTCHA | 10,000 assessments |
| Web Risk | 100,000 uris.search calls |
| Workload Manager | 5,000 resource evaluations |
| Application Integration | 400 executions, 20 GiB processed, first 2 connection nodes for Google services |
Pub/Sub’s 10 GiB of messages is a limit most hobby projects never reach. Secret Manager’s six-version cap is the one to watch, since every rotation creates a new version and old versions count as active until you disable or destroy them.
AI and API products
| Product | Always Free limit per month |
|---|---|
| Cloud Natural Language API | 5,000 units |
| Cloud Vision | 1,000 units |
| Video Intelligence API | 1,000 units |
| Speech-to-Text | 60 minutes, V1 API and listed SKUs only |
These are the pre-trained ML APIs, not the Gemini models. Gemini on Vertex AI has no Always Free allowance on Google Cloud; its free usage lives in the Gemini API free tier through AI Studio, which has its own rate limits and data terms. We cover those in the Gemini API free tier and pricing guide.
What a free VPS on Google Cloud actually costs
People search “google cloud free vps” and expect zero. The honest number is close to zero, not zero. The e2-micro VM, its 30 GB disk and 1 GB of egress are free inside the three US regions. Beyond that, anything the free tier table doesn’t name, such as a reserved static IP, egress above 1 GB or snapshot storage for backups, is billed at list price. Keep the VM in one of the three regions, stay under the egress line, and the monthly bill for a small web server is a rounding error.
Put a budget alert on the project anyway. The free tier gives no notification when you cross a limit, and the trial’s automatic stop doesn’t exist on a paid account.
How the free tier and the trial fit together
The two are complementary. The trial is $300 for 90 days and needs activation to continue; the free tier is permanent and applies to the same account before, during and after the trial. During the trial, free tier usage isn’t deducted from the $300, so a trial user effectively gets both. After the trial, if you upgrade, the free tier is what keeps a small project running at no cost. If you don’t upgrade, the trial billing account closes and your projects lose access to every service, free tier included, because a project without an active billing account can’t use Google Cloud services even within the free limits.
For the larger pools of credit that sit on top of the free tier, see the startup credits guide and the Google Cloud credits page. For how the free tier stacks up against Amazon’s 12-month and always-free offers, see Google Cloud vs AWS.
The short version
- One e2-micro VM per month with 30 GB disk is free in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, measured in hours across all your e2-micro instances.
- Cloud Storage is 5 GB total across the same three US regions, and buckets elsewhere are billed from the first byte.
- Cloud Run gets 2 million requests, Cloud Run functions 2 million invocations, BigQuery 1 TiB of queries and Firestore 50,000 reads per day.
- Limits reset monthly, never roll over, and apply to trial and paid accounts alike.
- GPUs, TPUs and Gemini on Vertex AI are not part of the free tier.
FAQ
Is Google Cloud free tier really free
Yes, within the published limits. The free tier applies as a discount to usage on any billing account in good standing, and it isn’t charged against the $300 trial credit either. Usage above a limit is billed at list price.
Does Google Cloud free tier expire
No. The Always Free products have no end date, unlike the 90-day trial. Google does change the limits and the product list from time to time, so check the usage limits page before you depend on a specific number.
Which regions are free on Google Cloud
The free e2-micro VM must run in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, and the free 5 GB of Cloud Storage must be in us-east1, us-west1 or us-central1. Most other free tier products, including Cloud Run, BigQuery and Firestore, have no region restriction.
Can I run a free VPS on Google Cloud forever
You can run one e2-micro VM with up to 30 GB of standard persistent disk at no charge for as long as the free tier exists, provided it stays in one of the three US regions and you keep egress under 1 GB a month. Reserved static IPs and snapshots are billed separately.
Do I need a credit card for Google Cloud free tier
Yes. The free tier applies to a billing account, and creating one requires a valid payment method. Projects without an active billing account can’t use Google Cloud services even inside the free limits.