Standard Storage
The default Cloud Storage class: billed per gigabyte-month, with no retrieval fee and no minimum storage duration. It is the right class for data read often and the wrong one for data nobody has opened in a year, which is what most buckets eventually contain.
Billed: Per gibibyte-month stored, priced by location. Multi-region and dual-region cost more than single region.
What triggers this charge
- Every object in a Standard-class bucket, charged for the whole month it exists.
- Location choice: multi-region and dual-region buckets carry a premium over a single region.
- Objects nobody has read since they were written — very common in log archives, build artifacts, and backup buckets.
How to reduce it
Turn on Autoclass
Autoclass moves objects between classes based on actual access, with no retrieval fees for the transitions. For a mixed bucket it is close to free money.
Write lifecycle rules for predictable data
Logs and backups have known access patterns. A rule moving objects to Nearline at 30 days and Coldline at 90 is a few lines of config.
Delete incomplete multipart uploads
Aborted uploads leave parts that are billed and invisible in the console object list. A lifecycle rule cleans them up.
Rates
Related charges
Now find out how much of this you are actually paying.
Finitizer breaks your Google Cloud bill down to the SKU, shows how each one has moved since last week, and separates rate changes from usage changes — so you know whether to talk to engineering or to procurement.