Cloud Billing is a collection of tools that help you track andunderstand your Google Cloud spending, pay your bill, and optimizeyour costs.
This page covers the following topics:
An introduction to Cloud Billing's tools.
An introduction to Cloud Billing accounts, and the relationshipbetween Cloud Billing accounts and Google payments profiles.Your Cloud Billing account pays for your usage in Google Cloudand Google Maps Platform.
Learn about Cloud Billing accounts.
An overview of resource management in Google Cloud. The way you organizeyour Google Cloud resources depends on your organization's structure,and affects how you analyze your costs in the Cloud Billing reports.
Learn about Google Cloud resources.
The tools in Cloud Billing help you monitor your usage costs, forecastyour spending, and identify opportunities to save on costs.
Get started
Take an interactive tour of Cloud Billing. If you're new toGoogle Cloud, this tutorial walks you through the basics ofunderstanding and managing your costs using the Google Cloud console.
Launch the Cloud Billing tour
View your billing reports and cost trends. The billing report helps youanswer questions like "Which Google Cloud services (such asCompute Engine or Cloud Storage) cost me the most?".
Launch the Cloud Billing reports tour
Monitor costs
Export your billing data to BigQuery. Export your usageand cost data to a BigQuery dataset, and use the dataset fordetailed analyses. You can also visualize your exported data in tools such asLooker Studio.
We recommend enabling the BigQuery export as early as possible,so that the data reflects your Google Cloud usage from the beginning.
Launch the Cloud Billing export to BigQuery tutorial
Create a budget, and set up spending alerts. Use budgets to track youractual Google Cloud spend against your planned spends. Then, set upalerts to stay informed of your spending.
Learn about creating budgets
Optimize and control costs
Sign up for Committed use discounts (CUDs). If your workloads havepredictable resource needs, you can purchase a Google Cloud commitment,which gives you discounted prices in exchange for your commitment to use aminimum level of resources for a specific term.
Learn about CUDs for the services that you use.
Get recommendations for CUDs.
If your organization has already signed up for CUDs,learn about analyzing the effectiveness of your commitments.
Automate cost controls with the Budgets API. Use programmaticbudget notifications to automate cost control responses when you get a budgetalert, such as forwarding budget alerts to other mediums, or throttlingyour resource usage by adjusting quotas.
Launch the tutorial for automated responses to budget notifications
About Cloud Billing accounts and Google payments profiles
A Cloud Billing account is set up in Google Cloud and is usedto define who pays for a given set of Google Cloud resources and GoogleMaps Platform APIs.Access control to a Cloud Billing account is established by IAM roles.A Cloud Billing account is connected to aGoogle payments profile.Your Google payments profile includes a payment instrument to which costs arecharged.
| monetization_on Cloud Billing account | payment Google payments profile |
|---|---|
A Cloud Billing account:
| A Google payments profile:
|
Cloud Billing account types
There are two types of Cloud Billing accounts:
Self-serve (or Online) account
- Payment instrument is a credit or debit card or ACH direct debit,depending on availability in each country or region.
- Costs are charged automatically to the payment instrument connected toCloud Billing account.
- You can sign up for self-serve accounts online.
- The documents generated for self-serve accounts include statements,payment receipts, and tax invoices, and are accessible in theGoogle Cloud console.
Invoiced (or Offline) account
- Payment instrument can be check or wire transfer.
- Invoices are sent by mail or electronically.
- Invoices are also accessible in the Google Cloud console, as arepayment receipts.
- You must be eligible for invoiced billing.Learn more about invoiced billing eligibility.
Google payments profile types
When you create yourGoogle payments profile,you'll be asked to specify the profile type. This information must be accuratefor tax and identity verification. After you create yourpayments profile, this setting can't be changed. When youare setting up your Google payments profile, make sure to choose the typethat best fits how you plan to use your profile.
There are two types of Google payments profiles:
Individual
- You're using your account for your own personal payments.
- If you register your payments profile as an individual,then only you can manage the profile. You won't be able to add or removeusers, or change permissions on the profile.
Business
- You're paying on behalf of a business, organization, partnership, oreducational institution.
- You use Google payments center to pay for Play apps and games, andGoogle services like Google Ads, Google Cloud, and Fiphone service.
- A business profile allows you to add other users to the Google paymentsprofile you manage, so that more than one person can access or manage apayments profile.
- All users added to a business profile can see the payment information onthat profile.
Charging cycle
The charging cycle on your Cloud Billing account determines how andwhen you pay for your Google Cloud services and your use ofGoogle Maps Platform APIs.
For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your Google Cloud costsare charged automatically in one of two ways:
- Monthly billing: Costs are charged on a regular monthly cycle.
- Threshold billing: Costs are charged when your account has accrued a specificamount.
For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your charging cycle isautomatically assigned when you create the account. You do not get to chooseyour charging cycle and you cannot change the charging cycle.
For invoiced Cloud Billing accounts, you typically receive oneinvoice per month and the amount of time you have to pay your invoice(your payment terms) is determined by the agreement you made with Google.
- Find your charging cycle
- Learn more about threshold billing
Billing contacts
A Cloud Billing account includes one or more contacts that are definedon theGoogle payments profile that is connected to the Cloud Billing account. These contacts arepeople who are designated to receive billing information specific to the paymentinstrument on file (for example, when a credit card needs to be updated). Toaccess and manage this list of contacts, you can use theGoogle payments center or you can use theGoogle Cloud console.
Subaccounts
Subaccounts are intended for resellers. If you are a reseller, you canuse subaccounts to represent your customers' charges for the purpose ofchargebacks.
Cloud Billing subaccounts allow you to group charges fromprojects together on a separate section of your invoice. Abilling subaccount is a Cloud Billing account that is owned by areseller's parent Cloud Billing account. The usagecharges for all billing subacccounts are paid for by the reseller's parentCloud Billing account. Note that the parent Cloud Billingaccount must be oninvoiced billing.
A subaccount behaves like a Cloud Billing account in most ways: it canhave projects linked to it, Cloud Billing data exports can beconfigured on it, and it can have IAM roles defined on it. Anycharges made to projects linked to the subaccount are grouped and subtotalledon the invoice, and the effect on resource management is that access controlpolicy can be entirely segregated on the subaccount to allow for customerseparation and management.
The Cloud Billing Account API provides the ability to createand manage subaccounts. Use the API to connect to your existing systemsand provision new customers or chargeback groups programmatically.
About resource management for billing
You can configure billing on Google Cloud in a variety ofways to meet different needs. This section introduces the core concepts for yourorganization and for billing, and discusses how to use them effectively.
For information on organizing your resources to effectively monitor your costs,see the.
About resources
In the context of Google Cloud, a resource can refer to the service-levelresources that are used to process your workloads (VMs, DBs, and so on), orto the account-level resources that sit above the services, such asprojects, folders, and the organization.
Resource management
Resource management is focused on how you should configure and grant access tothe various cloud resources for your company/team, specifically the setup andorganization of the account-level resources that sit above the service-levelresources. Account-level resources are the resources involved in settingup and administering your Google Cloud account.
Resource hierarchy
Google Cloud resources are organized hierarchically. This hierarchy allowsyou to map your organization's operational structure to Google Cloud, andto manage access control and permissions for groups of related resources. Theresource hierarchy provides logical attach points for access management policies(Identity and Access Management) andOrganization policies.
Both IAM and Organization policies are inherited through thehierarchy, and the effective policy at each node of the hierarchy is the resultof policies directly applied at the node and policies inherited from itsancestors.
The following diagram shows an example resource hierarchy illustrating the coreaccount-level resources involved in administering your Google Cloudaccount.
Domain
- Your company Domain is the primary identity of your organization andestablishes your company's identity with Google services, includingGoogle Cloud.
- You use the domain to manage the users in your organization.
- At the domain level, you define which users should be associated with yourorganization when using Google Cloud.
- Domain is also where you can universally administer policy for your usersand devices (for example, enable 2-factor authentication, reset passwordsfor any users in your organization).
- The Domain is linked to either aGoogle Workspace orCloud Identity account.
- The Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account is associatedwith exactly one Organization.
- You manage the domain-level functionality using the Google Admin Console(admin.google.com).
For more information on the hierarchy of resources, see theResource Manager documentation.
Organization
- An Organization is the root node of the Google Cloud hierarchy ofresources.
- All Google Cloud resources that belong to an Organization are groupedunder the Organization node, allowing you to define settings, permissions,and policies for all projects, folders, resources, andCloud Billing accounts it parents.
- An Organization is associated with exactly one Domain(established with either a Google Workspace or Cloud Identityaccount), and is created automatically when you set up your domain inGoogle Cloud.
- Using an Organization, you can centrally manage your Google Cloudresources and your users' access to those resources. This includes:
- Proactive management: reorganize resources as needed (for example,restructuring or spinning up a new division may require newprojects and folders).
- Reactive management: an Organization resource provides a safety netto regain access to lost resources (for example, if one of your team membersloses their access or leaves the company).
- The various roles and resources that are related to Google Cloud(including the organization, projects, folders, resources, andCloud Billing accounts) are managed within the Google Cloud console.
For more information on organizations, see the following documentation:
- Creating and Managing Organizations
- Viewing and managing organization resources
- Managing multiple organizations
Folders
- Folders are a grouping mechanism and can contain projects,other folders, or a combination of both.
- To use folders, you must have anOrganization node.
- Folders and projects are all mapped under the Organization node.
- Folders can be used to group resources that share common IAMpolicies.
- While a folder can contain multiple folders or resources, a given folder orresource can have exactly one parent.
For more details about using folders, seeCreating and Managing Folders.
Projects
- All service-level resources are parented by projects, thebase-level organizing entity in Google Cloud.
- Projects are required to use service-level resources (such asCompute Engine virtual machines (VMs), Pub/Sub topics,Cloud Storage buckets, and so on).
- You can use projects to represent logical projects, teams,environments, or other collections that map to a business function orstructure.
- Projects form the basis for enabling services, APIs, andIAM permissions.
- Any given resource can only exist in one project.
For more details about projects, see the following documentation:
- Creating and Managing Projects
- Moving a project
- Migrating projects
Resources
- Google Cloud service-level resources are the fundamental componentsthat make up all Google Cloud services, such as Compute Engine virtualmachines (VMs), Pub/Sub topics, Cloud Storage buckets, and so on.
- For billing and access control purposes, resources exist at the lowest levelof a hierarchy that also includes projects and an organization.
Labels
- Labels help you categorize your Google Cloud resources (such asCompute Engine instances).
- A label is a key-value pair.
- You can attach labels to each resource, then filter the resources based ontheir labels.
- Labels are great for cost tracking at a granular-level. Information aboutlabels is forwarded to the billing system, so you cananalyze your charges by label.
For more details about using labels, seeCreating and Managing Labels.
Relationships between resources, Cloud Billing accounts, and Google payments profiles
Two types of relationships govern the interactions between organizations,Cloud Billing accounts, and projects: ownership andpayment linkage.
- Ownership refers to IAM permission inheritance.
- Payment linkages define which Cloud Billing account pays for agiven project.
The following diagram shows the relationship of ownership and payment linkagesfor a sample organization.
In the diagram, the organization has ownership over Projects 1, 2, and 3,meaning that it is the IAM permissions parent of the threeprojects.
The Cloud Billing account is linked to Projects 1, 2, and 3, meaningthat it pays for costs incurred by the three projects.
The Cloud Billing account is also linked to aGoogle payments profile, which storesinformation like name, address, and payment methods.
In this example, any users who are granted IAM billing roleson the organization also have those roles on the Cloud Billing accountor the projects.
For information on granting IAM billing roles, seeOverview of Cloud Billing access control.
Organize your resources for effective cost management
picture_as_pdfA Guide to Financial Governance in the Cloud
video_libraryVideo library: Best practices for monitoring and managing your costs.
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