Google Cloud Storage pricing: what backups and restores cost
Based in the United States · Prices checked
Google Cloud Storage Standard costs $0.02 per GiB a month (Archive: $1.23 per TiB), with the first 100 GiB of downloads free each month. 10 TB of backups: from $185.04 a month, $1,498.89 the month you restore it all.
- 10 TB, normal month
- $185.04Coldline, South Carolina
- 10 TB, month you restore it all
- $1,498.89Coldline, South Carolina
10 TB kept, 1 TB downloaded in a normal month, all 10 TB downloaded in the month you restore; the other calculator defaults apply.
On a 10 TB backup Google Cloud Storage is the second most expensive of the 18 vendors with both bills for a normal month and the most expensive for the month you restore everything, so a restore barely changes its place.
What adds to a Google Cloud Storage bill besides storage
From Google Cloud Storage's published rules, per class and region. "Not published" means Google Cloud Storage's pricing pages do not state it.
| Class and region | Minimum storage period | Smallest billed object | Minimum monthly bill | Reading data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard, South Carolina | None | None | None | Free |
| Nearline, South Carolina | 30 days | None | None | $0.01 per GiB |
| Coldline, South Carolina | 90 days | None | None | $0.02 per GiB |
| Archive, South Carolina | 365 days | None | None | $0.05 per GiB |
| Standard, Belgium | None | None | None | Free |
| Nearline, Belgium | 30 days | None | None | $0.01 per GiB |
| Coldline, Belgium | 90 days | None | None | $0.02 per GiB |
| Archive, Belgium | 365 days | None | None | $0.05 per GiB |
| Rapid, South Carolina zonal bucket | None | None | None | $0.0006 per GiB |
Reading data is the charge for reading what is stored, billed on top of any download charge. Downloads: the first 100 GiB of downloads free each month. Deleting an object before its minimum storage period ends still bills the remaining time.
How the storage classes compare
Same offer, two bills. Vertical positions show cost rank within these 9 offers.
Lowest normal bill$185.04Coldline · South Carolina
Lowest restore bill$1,407.27Standard · South Carolina
Every bill in the chart
| Offer | Normal month | Restore month |
|---|---|---|
| Coldline · South Carolina | $185.04 | $1,498.89 |
| Coldline · Belgium | $197.64 | $1,511.44 |
| Nearline · South Carolina | $209.10 | $1,420.82 |
| Nearline · Belgium | $221.20 | $1,432.88 |
| Archive · South Carolina | $279.75 | $1,913.00 |
| Standard · South Carolina | $289.28 | $1,407.27 |
| Archive · Belgium | $294.50 | $1,927.70 |
| Standard · Belgium | $301.32 | $1,419.26 |
| Rapid · South Carolina zonal bucket | $1,137.74 | $2,261.07 |
Price Google Cloud Storage on your numbers
Every Google Cloud Storage class priced on your numbers, for a normal month and for the month you restore. A charge Google Cloud Storage does not publish stays named on the bill, never counted as zero. The Google Cloud Storage pricing calculator adds common backups to start from and the vendors nearest to Google Cloud Storage on the same numbers.
When Google Cloud Storage does not save you money
Google Cloud Storage costs more than most vendors in a normal month for a 10 TB backup repository and 1 TB of app files with public downloads, and in the month you restore for every backup below. The widest gap is a 100 TB compliance archive, the month you restore 10 TB of it: $1,677.78 at Google Cloud Storage against $250.10 at Oracle OCI Object Storage (Archive).
| Backup | Google Cloud Storage, normal month | Cheapest normal month | Google Cloud Storage, month you restore | Cheapest month you restore |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NAS offsite, 2 TB2 TB, 50 GB downloaded a month, 200,000 files | $13.786th of 18 | $8.32OVHcloud Object Storage · Infrequent Access | $255.0518th of 18 | $11.12Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| Backup repository, 10 TB10 TB, 1 TB downloaded a month, 1 million objects, readable at once | $185.0417th of 18 | $44.65OVHcloud Object Storage · Infrequent Access | $1,407.2718th of 18 | $55.83Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| Photo archive, 5 TB5 TB, little downloaded, 250,000 files | $11.172nd of 18 | $6.92Amazon S3 · S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $645.7118th of 18 | $27.88Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| App files with public downloads, 1 TB1 TB stored, 5 TB downloaded a month, 50 million reads | $595.3717th of 17 | $7.65Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage | $707.5317th of 17 | $7.69Telnyx Cloud Storage · Regular Storage |
| Compliance archive, 100 TB100 TB kept for years, 10 TB restored at a time | $124.012nd of 18 | $99.34Amazon S3 · S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $1,677.7817th of 18 | $250.10Oracle OCI Object Storage · Archive |
Each backup is a preset of the home calculator, priced with its other defaults on prices checked 17 October to 6 November 2026. A place counts each vendor's cheapest class that meets the backup's limit on how long data may take to be ready, among the vendors with a full bill for that month. Price your own backup above.
Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive: each file must be restored before you can download it, which takes up to 12 hours, and Amazon S3 bills each file for at least 180 days.
Oracle OCI Object Storage Archive: each file must be restored before you can download it (Oracle says the first byte comes back within an hour, but not when the whole file is ready), and Oracle bills each file for at least 90 days.
Alternatives to Google Cloud Storage: every other vendor ranked against it, with what moving 10 TB costs and when the saving pays it back.
Head to head: Google Cloud Storage against Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2 and Akamai Cloud Object Storage, both bills on the same backups.
Price update
The current source evidence does not support the older examples
The older examples are hidden. Fully supported current receipts appear below. If no receipt appears, this provider remains unavailable until every required source field is complete; an unavailable amount is never replaced with zero.
Prices checked .
Bills for the 10 TB workload
Each class in Belgium costs $12.04 to $14.75 a month more than the same class in South Carolina on this workload, at the same rates: Google's Always Free usage counts only in three US regions, South Carolina among them, so a bucket in Belgium pays from the first gigabyte and the first request.
The normal and restore month for each class9 classes and regions
Standard, South Carolina
Normal month $289.28
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,407.27
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Nearline, South Carolina
Normal month $209.10
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,420.82
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Coldline, South Carolina
Normal month $185.04
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,498.89
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Archive, South Carolina
Normal month $279.75
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,913.00
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Standard, Belgium
Normal month $301.32
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,419.26
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Nearline, Belgium
Normal month $221.20
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,432.88
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Coldline, Belgium
Normal month $197.64
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,511.44
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Archive, Belgium
Normal month $294.50
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $1,927.70
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Rapid, South Carolina zonal bucket
Normal month $1,137.74
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Month you restore $2,261.07
Calculated from the provider's listed rates.
Price your own workload against every vendor, including the month you restore and how long it takes to come back.
What the pricing page does not lead with
-
The 100 GiB egress allowance is destination-eligible, not universal.
Australia and China are excluded, and the allowance is scoped from eligible North American buckets to each eligible destination.
Source, checked 25 July 2026 -
Nearline, Coldline, and Archive charge retrieval in addition to internet egress.
A restore can pay two per-byte charges plus requests.
Source, checked 25 July 2026 -
A read-only restore never creates an early-deletion charge.
The 30, 90, and 365-day remainders require deletion, overwrite, movement, or transition of the source.
Source, checked 25 July 2026
The rest of this vendor's non-obvious rules 4 more
-
Nearline has a 30-day minimum, Coldline 90 days, and Archive 365 days; Standard and Rapid have no minimum duration.
Delete, replace, move, or rewrite before the class minimum charges the remaining duration. A read-only restore still does not trigger it.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Qualifying lifecycle and Autoclass movements can be exempt.
A generic transition flag is insufficient; the movement mechanism changes the bill.
Source, checked 26 July 2026 -
Rapid gets no Always Free allowances and also charges for Class C and D operations.
Applying conventional GCS free tiers or an A/B-only model materially understates Rapid.
Source, checked 25 July 2026 -
Always Free storage and operation allowances apply only in us-west1, us-central1, and us-east1, while Rapid is excluded.
Our price table covers Google Cloud Storage in South Carolina (us-east1), with the allowances, and in Belgium (europe-west1), without them; it cannot tell you another region's price.
Source, checked 26 July 2026
Every class, and the rules that change its bill
What each class is for and the published rules that do not depend on its rate, each with the day it was checked. Current rates are in the bills above.
Standard 5 rules
Frequently accessed online objects and backup repositories that should avoid retrieval and minimum-duration charges.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Internet egress allowance | 100 GiB monthly from eligible North American buckets to each eligible destination; Australia and China excluded | Destination eligibility decides whether the allowance is subtracted. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Retrieval and same-region movement | not charged | Standard has no retrieval charge, and moving data within a region is not priced as an internet download. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Minimum duration and early deletion | does not apply | Standard has no minimum storage period, so reads, deletes and overwrites add no early-deletion charge. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Minimum billable object size | No minimum object size | Google states that no storage class has a minimum object size, so small objects are not billed at a larger size. Vendor's page, checked 11 October 2026 |
| Lifecycle transition requests | The destination storage class determines the Class A rate | A transition request can be charged even when the movement is exempt from early-deletion fees. Vendor's page, checked 2 October 2026 |
Nearline 4 rules
Data read about monthly, where lower storage cost can offset retrieval and higher operation prices.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum storage duration | 30 days with a prorated early-deletion remainder | Delete, overwrite, move, or transition can bill unused duration. A read-only restore cannot. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Lifecycle and Autoclass exceptions | conditional: qualifying provider-managed transitions are exempt from early-deletion charges | A move made by Lifecycle or Autoclass and a delete or overwrite you make yourself are not always charged the same for early deletion. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
| Minimum billable object size | No minimum object size | Google states that no storage class has a minimum object size, so small objects are not billed at a larger size. Vendor's page, checked 11 October 2026 |
| Lifecycle transition requests | The destination storage class determines the Class A rate | A transition request can be charged even when the movement is exempt from early-deletion fees. Vendor's page, checked 2 October 2026 |
Coldline 4 rules
Quarterly or less frequent recovery data where lower storage cost offsets higher retrieval and request prices.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum storage duration | 90 days with a prorated early-deletion remainder | Deleting young data can cost several months of storage; restoring it cannot. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Lifecycle and Autoclass exceptions | depends on use | Qualifying managed movements can avoid the buyer-driven early-deletion result. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
| Minimum billable object size | No minimum object size | Google states that no storage class has a minimum object size, so small objects are not billed at a larger size. Vendor's page, checked 11 October 2026 |
| Lifecycle transition requests | The destination storage class determines the Class A rate | A transition request can be charged even when the movement is exempt from early-deletion fees. Vendor's page, checked 2 October 2026 |
Archive 4 rules
Long-lived backup data that needs online access semantics but is expected to be read rarely.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum storage duration | 365 days with a prorated early-deletion remainder | Deleting or overwriting data early can cost most of a year of storage. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Lifecycle and Autoclass exceptions | depends on use | Provider-managed movements must be distinguished from deletion, overwrite, or buyer-driven transition. Vendor's page, checked 26 July 2026 |
| Minimum billable object size | No minimum object size | Google states that no storage class has a minimum object size, so small objects are not billed at a larger size. Vendor's page, checked 11 October 2026 |
| Lifecycle transition requests | The destination storage class determines the Class A rate | A transition request can be charged even when the movement is exempt from early-deletion fees. Vendor's page, checked 2 October 2026 |
Rapid 5 rules
Zonal, very-low-latency storage when Rapid Bucket eligibility and per-operation economics are required.
| Rule | Value | Why it moves the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Always Free allowances | does not apply | Rapid explicitly receives none of the conventional storage, egress, or operation allowances. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Retrieval | not charged | The per-byte recovery line is Rapid read transfer, not a separate cold retrieval fee. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Minimum duration and early deletion | does not apply | Rapid publishes no minimum retention. Vendor's page, checked 25 July 2026 |
| Minimum billable object size | No minimum object size | Google states that no storage class has a minimum object size, so small objects are not billed at a larger size. Vendor's page, checked 11 October 2026 |
| Lifecycle transition requests | The destination storage class determines the Class A rate | A transition request can be charged even when the movement is exempt from early-deletion fees. Vendor's page, checked 2 October 2026 |
Questions buyers ask about Google Cloud Storage
Is Google Cloud Storage egress free?
Only inside an eligible path and allowance. The regular classes give 100 GiB monthly from eligible North American buckets to each eligible destination, excluding Australia and China. Paid internet transfer then uses graduated rates that depend on the destination. Rapid gets no free allowance: it pays the same network prices from the first GiB, plus its own per-GiB read transfer.
What belongs on a Google Cloud Storage restore bill?
Standard has no retrieval charge, but Nearline, Coldline, and Archive add per-GiB retrieval. A public restore can also include Class A and Class B requests plus internet egress after the destination-eligible allowance. Rapid has no retrieval fee but charges its own per-GiB read transfer and operation rates, with internet egress on top as for the other classes.
Does reading or restoring a GCS object trigger early deletion?
No. A restore pays any retrieval, request and egress charges but leaves the source object in place. Early deletion requires deletion, overwrite, movement, or transition before the class minimum.
What happens if I remove cold GCS data early?
Nearline uses a 30-day minimum, Coldline 90 days, and Archive 365 days. Deleting or overwriting data before its minimum bills the days left, prorated. Standard and Rapid have no minimum duration. Some qualifying Lifecycle and Autoclass moves are exempt, so how the data is moved matters.
Can I apply the GCS free tier in every region and class?
No. The Always Free storage and operation allowances apply only in us-west1, us-central1, and us-east1, and Rapid is excluded. We price South Carolina (us-east1) with the allowances and Belgium (europe-west1) without them; other locations are not priced here.
Is Rapid just a faster version of GCS Standard?
No. Rapid is a zonal offer with hourly storage, per-GiB ingress and read-transfer charges, Class A through D operation charges, and none of the regular Always Free allowances. It is not directly comparable to Standard, Nearline, Coldline, or Archive on storage rate alone.
Does GCS publish a minimum billable object size for these offers?
It publishes that there is none: Google's storage-class documentation says no class has a minimum object size, so we add no small-object storage charge to any of the five offers. Many small objects still cost more through per-request operation charges.
Can I use Google Cloud Storage as an immutable backup target?
Yes, conditionally. Google Cloud publishes Object Retention Lock and Bucket Lock across the storage classes priced here. Locked object retention cannot be reduced or removed. Platform versioning is not documented as a universal prerequisite, but some backup-tool workflows require both Object Versioning and Object Retention Lock.