Free trials on GCP

Google Cloud offers a generous free trial that, at the time of writing this book, includes credits worth $300 USD to be used within 12 months. This free trial credit can be used on all Google Cloud services, with some limitations such as Compute Engine instance hardware configurations. With moderation and diligence in releasing unused resources, the free trial credit can go a very long way. Once the free credit is expended or the allotted time runs out, the account will be paused and you'll have the option to enable billing by upgrading to a paid account.

In addition to the free trial, Google offers a free tier on many of their platform services that are available during and after the free trial window. These free tier quotas are more than enough to build a foundational understanding of many services on GCP. For example, users can run a simple web application via App Engine Standard, a persistence layer via Datastore, content hosting in Cloud Storage, and incorporate event-driven functionality via Cloud Pub/Sub and Cloud Functions—all within the free tier. Along with providing an excellent learning opportunity for new users, this free tier makes it possible to build out a small proof of concept that is ready to scale seamlessly with user adoption.