GCP – More value for less with Cloud SQL committed use discounts

Getting the best price in the cloud shouldn’t require sophisticated forecasting models or unnecessary financial risk. Today, we’re introducing committed use discounts for Cloud SQL, which reward your steady-state, predictable usage in a way that’s easy to use and can accommodate changes in your database environment. Cloud SQL committed use discounts give you a 25% discount off of on-demand pricing for a one-year commitment and a 52% discount off of on-demand pricing for a three-year commitment.

These committed use discounts are flexible:

• No upfront payments are required

• Available and able to be shared between MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server instances

• Fully transferable between machine sizes

Why is flexibility important? It saves you time by reducing management overhead and maximizes your savings by allowing you to pool more resources and achieve higher utilization.

You can see what you’ll save before purchasing using the built-in calculator in the Purchase Commitment dialog of your Google Cloud billing console. Here’s an example:

We’re also simplifying our on-demand pricing. Cloud SQL previously offered sustained use discounts, which automatically lower the price of your instances when you use them for a significant portion of the month. Starting today, we’re lowering our list price to the previous sustained use discount price (and removing sustained use discounts). Now, our list price is our best on-demand price, regardless of your usage. These new committed use discounts are applied to this new, lower list price.

How this simple and flexible pricing works

We built committed use discounts so you actually attain the savings you expect—no matter how you configure your resources or which database you select. You commit to a consistent amount of usage, measured in USD per hour of equivalent on-demand spend, for a one- or three-year term. Cloud SQL Committed Use Discounts cannot be applied to licensing, storage, or networking. Instead, these discounts apply to all Cloud SQL database instance CPU and memory usage in the region in which you have committed, except shared CPU machine types (db-f1-micro and db-g1-small). The discounts also apply to usage from all databases supported by Cloud SQL, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. 

Committed use discounts automatically apply to aggregate Cloud SQL instance usage in a region, giving you low, predictable costs, without the need to make any manual changes or updates yourself. This flexibility saves you time and helps you to save more by achieving high utilization rates across your commitments, without requiring sophisticated forecasting or imposing constraints on resource configuration.

For example, say you run several Cloud SQL for SQL Server database instances for one month with aggregate vCPU and memory consumption of $10,000. Then, the next month, you migrate some of these instances to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and change instance sizes. As long as your aggregate resource consumption remains at $10,000, you receive the same discount both months even though your database environment footprint is different.

Getting started is easy

1. Sign in to the Manage billing accounts page in the Google Cloud Console
2. On the Billing Overview page, look for the What’s new card, then click Purchase Cloud SQL Commitment.

Check out our documentation for more details on committed use discounts. For Cloud SQL pricing information, including the new list price, take a look at our pricing page or try out our pricing calculator.

Want to learn more about what else is new with Cloud SQL? Be sure to check out our session at Next OnAir. Get started and try Google Cloud for free now.