View resource costs and utilization

This document describes how to view summary cost data, utilization data, and cost optimization recommendations for Google Cloud services on the Optimization page to help you to optimize costs in your projects and App Hub applications.

To learn about using Gemini for Google Cloud to help you with cost optimization, see Optimize costs with Gemini assistance .

This document is for developers and platform administrators. If you manage billing accounts or budgets in Cloud Billing, see the Cloud Billing cost optimization documentation , for information about using FinOps Hub and Gemini Cloud Assist in Cloud Billing.

About resource costs

This section describes information about costs that the App Optimize API provides to the Optimization page and Gemini Cloud Assist.

Costs organized by product

Cloud Billing and the App Optimize API categorize product-related costs differently. Cost data that the API provides to the Optimization page and Gemini Cloud Assist is organized logically by product. Cloud Billing groups SKUs for resource usage into services . A service in Cloud Billing might be a subset of a Google Cloud product or might include SKUs from multiple Google Cloud products. These Cloud Billing services are unrelated to App Hub services .

For example, the costs for Compute Engine and GKE products are equivalent to multiple Cloud Billing services.

Product on the Optimization page	Service in Cloud Billing
Compute Engine	Compute Engine and VM Manager
GKE	Compute Engine and GKE
Persistent Disk	Compute Engine

The Networking service includes SKUs for many networking products such as Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud NAT, Cloud VPN, Private Service Connect, and Performance Dashboard. The Optimization page categorizes these costs by product, but Cloud Billing only provides a single Networking service and doesn't have defined services for each networking product.

You can search the list of Google Cloud SKUs to learn more about how SKUs are categorized in Cloud Billing.

Cost values

Costs are based on your contract prices, before any committed-use discounts (CUDs) or other credits are applied. For an application, costs include all resources that are fully used by the application and doesn't include costs for resources that are shared across applications.

Cost data availability

Google Cloud products report usage and cost data to Cloud Billing processes at varying intervals. As a result, you might see a delay between your use of Google Cloud services and the usage and costs displayed on the Optimization page or returned by Gemini Cloud Assist. Typically, your costs are available within a day, but can sometimes take more than 24 hours.

Limitations and known issues

• Costs for Compute Engine VMs, Compute Engine MIGs, and GKE clusters don't include network charges for data egress or Persistent Disk usage. These costs are reported separately.

• Only some products support resource-level costs .

• On the Optimization page, you can't view or filter resources by location when you are viewing data for an application.

• Costs for an application are only available if all application resource costs are in the same currency. If an application has resources associated with different billing accounts, the billing accounts must all be configured for the same currency .

Before you begin

Before you begin

To view cost and utilization data, set up Cloud Hub .

Required roles

The Cloud Hub Operator role contains most of the required permissions to view data on the Optimization page, including permissions to view Monitoring data, App Hub application data, and Active Assist recommendations.

To get the permissions that you need to view data in Cloud Hub, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project or management project (for app-enabled folders ):

• View most data in Cloud Hub: Cloud Hub Operator ( roles/cloudhub.operator )
• View cost data: ( roles/viewer ) or a custom role with the billing.resourceCosts.get permission

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations .

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles .

Making changes based on your analysis of costs, such as applying a recommendation from Active Assist or changing the billing option for Cloud Run, requires additional permissions or coordination with a member of your organization who has the required permissions.

View costs and utilization

The Optimization page displays the following information:

• The total cost and cost trend for a selected project or application.
• The top five resources or application workloads with the highest cost along with their cost change.
• The five most expensive resources or workloads with lowest utilization.

When you view data for a selected project or application, you can filter the page to display specific products.

For information about which costs are included in displayed cost data, see About costs .

To view costs and utilization:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Optimizationpage:

   Go to Optimization

2. Select the project or application that you want to view:

   • To view data for applications, choose the folder that is configured for application management. Folders configured for application management have an special icon (). The management project for the folder also has a special icon () and the project name is in the format FOLDER-NAME -mp . If you choose the management project instead of the folder, then the project picker automatically changes the selection to the folder.

   • To view data for an individual project, choose the project that contains the resources you want to view.

3. To filter data for a specific product, location, or historical time range, select an option from the Product, Location, or time range filters. You can view up to 30 days of data.

   The Optimization page shows the following information:

   • Cost trend: Total costs for the selected filters.

     

     

     • Total gross cost: displays the total cost of usage for the selected project or application based on your contract prices, before any committed-use discounts (CUDs) or other credits are applied. For an application, the total cost includes all resources that are fully used by the application and excludes resources shared across applications.
     • Cost change: displays the change in gross cost. The change is calculated based on the time period you selected. For example, if you select 7 daysand the current date is April 30, 2025, the change percentage is a comparison between data from April 23 to April 29 and data from April 16 to April 22. The start of the billing day is at midnight in the US and Canadian Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8) time zone when Pacific Standard Time is in effect. When Pacific Daylight Time is in effect, the start of the billing day is at midnight in the US and Canadian Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) time zone.

   • Resources by cost and utilization: This section lists top resources to consider for further investigation. Costs associated with products that aren't supported are classified as Other.

     For a project: displays the top five resources with the highest cost and cost change and the top five resources with high cost and lowest utilization. Resources for a product that aren't supported are classified as Other.

     

     • To further explore costs, click a specific resource name to view details for that resource.
     • To view more detailed cost information, click View details in Cost Explorer. The view in Cost Explorer is filtered to show the same project, product, location, and time range as the Optimization page.

     For an application: displays the top five workloads and services with the highest cost and cost change and the top five workloads and services with high cost and lowest utilization.

     

     • To further explore costs, click a specific workload or service name to view details for that workload or service.
     • To view more detailed cost information, click View details in Cost Explorer. The view in Cost Explorer is filtered to show the same application, product, location, and time range as the Optimization page.

For more information about using Cost Explorer, see Optimize costs with Cost Explorer .

Since utilization is only one aspect of cost for Google Cloud services, we recommend that you use data on the Optimization page in the context of other cost-optimization features and best practices that are available for the services you use. For example, Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and Cloud Run provides committed use discounts . Cloud Run also lets you choose from different billing options based on how you use your instances.

View recommendations

Active Assist generates recommendations and insights to help you optimize your Google Cloud resources. The Optimization page in Cloud Hub displays the top 5 cost optimization recommendations for the selected project or application.

For information about cost recommenders and how they work, see the Recommenders page. The Optimization page displays cost recommendations from all cost recommenders except for the committed use discounts recommender .

To view recommendations:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Optimizationpage:

   Go to Optimization

2. Select the project or application that you want to view:

   • To view data for applications, choose the folder that is configured for application management. Folders configured for application management have an special icon (). The management project for the folder also has a special icon () and the project name is in the format FOLDER-NAME -mp . If you choose the management project instead of the folder, then the project picker automatically changes the selection to the folder.

   • To view data for an individual project, choose the project that contains the resources you want to view.

   The Top 5 optimization recommendationstable displays the following information:

   • Resource(for projects) or Workload(for applications) - The resource or workload that the recommendation applies to.
   • Cost- The cost for the selected time period in the filter bar. The default is 7 days. Consider choosing 30 days as the time period so that it's easier to compare costs with the Monthly savingscolumn.
   • Monthly savings: The highest amount of money you can potentially save if you apply the cost savings recommendations.
     • Cost savings are an estimate that is calculated using data from the last month, regardless of the time period selected in the filter bar.
     • Cost savings are based on your contract prices, before any committed use discounts or other credits are applied
     • Actual cost savings can vary.

3. To view additional recommendations, click View all recommendations in Active Assist Recommendations.

   • If a project is selected in the project picker, Active Assist displays all recommendations for the project.
   • Active Assist does not support displaying data for a folder or an App Hub application. If you know which project contains the resource that you are interested in optimizing, select the project from the project picker.

What's next

• Explore opportunities for cost savings and optimization in FinOps hub .
• Perform in-depth cost analysis with Cloud Billing reports .
• Learn cost optimization best practices in the document Google Cloud Architecture Framework: Cost optimization .