GCP – Announcing Cloud SQL free trial instances: Experience the power of a fully managed database

Cloud SQL is a proven foundation for fully managed databases, offering production-ready MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server database engines without the operational headache. With Cloud SQL, there’s no need to worry about patches, backups, and scaling limits — just connect your app and start building.

Today, we’re announcing new free trial instances designed to help you experience the power of Cloud SQL for MySQL and PostgreSQL, with no upfront commitment. Whether you’re a seasoned Google Cloud developer or new to the platform, this 30-day free trial allows you to explore, test, and truly understand the value Cloud SQL brings to your database needs.

There are two editions of Cloud SQL currently available:

• Cloud SQL Enterprise Plus edition: Designed for mission-critical applications, providing the highest performance and availability with a 99.99% SLA (including maintenance). It features near-zero downtime for planned maintenance, significant performance boosts through Data Cache (using local SSD), and enhanced write throughput. 

• Cloud SQL Enterprise edition: Suitable for most business applications, offering high availability and managed maintenance with a 99.95% SLA. It offers all the core capabilities of Cloud SQL, striking a good balance of performance, availability, and cost.

Why a dedicated Cloud SQL free trial?

You might be familiar with the standard $300 Google Cloud free trial for new users. While that’s a fantastic starting point, customers have been asking us for a more specialized offering. They want a dedicated environment to test the full power of Cloud SQL, especially enterprise-grade configurations for Performance, High Availability (HA), and Data Cache. This new trial is our answer.

This trial provides a significantly enhanced experience for customers developing applications on top of Cloud SQL, allowing you to:

• Experience enterprise-grade features: Test critical functionality like High Availability and Data Cache, both essential to robust and performant database operations.

• Onboard new users: As a developer, get hands-on with Cloud SQL without the usual hurdle of getting expense approvals for running tests.

• Perform preliminary performance testing: Evaluate Cloud SQL’s performance for your specific workloads, ensuring it meets your demands.

This new Cloud SQL free trial is designed for a wide range of users:

• Existing Google Cloud customers: If you’re already using other Google Cloud products, but haven’t explored Cloud SQL, this is your chance!

• New Google Cloud users: Complementing the existing standard $300 trial, this offers a deeper dive into Cloud SQL’s capabilities.

What’s included in the 30-day free trial?

We want you to get a comprehensive understanding of Cloud SQL’s key value pillars: price-performance, high availability, connectivity, security, observability, ease of manageability, and open-source compatibility. Your free trial instance will be configured to help you explore all of these areas, based on the following database instance:

When you’re ready to move your workload to production, upgrading to a paid instance is a simple one-click upgrade, at any time during the trial.

Not ready to upgrade quite yet? At the end of the 30-day free trial, we automatically suspend your free trial resources, keeping the instance in a “stopped” state for an additional 90 days, at no additional charge. This should give you ample time to upgrade and continue without interruption.

Ready to get started?

Ready to unlock the full potential of your data with Cloud SQL? Creating your free trial instance is easy. If you’re new to Google Cloud, just sign up for an account and follow the instructions to create your Cloud SQL free trial instance. This exciting offer is available in all Google Cloud regions. Start your free trial and see what Cloud SQL can do for your applications.