Cost management for project owners

This document is an introduction to the Cloud Billing tools that are available to Google Cloud project owners, solution owners, and DevOps managers to help you track and understand your Google Cloud spending and optimize your costs in the projects you control.

This document covers the following topics:

• An introduction to Cloud Billing accounts and Google Cloud projects . Cloud Billing accounts track and pay for your billable usage of Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform, Firebase, and Gemini API in AI Studio resources.

• The permissions needed for multi-project or single-project access to view Google Cloud costs .

  • To view costs for a single project, one project at a time, you only need project-side billing permissions.
  • To view costs aggregated for multiple projects, you need to set up multi-project-scoped access to Cloud Billing accounts .

• An introduction to the Cloud Billing tools for project owners. When your cost view permissions are limited to viewing costs for one or many projects, billing-account-level tools and features aren't available.

About Cloud Billing accounts and Google Cloud projects

• A Cloud Billing account defines who pays for Google Cloud and cloud-adjacent products and resources that are consumed.
• Google Cloud projects contain Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform, Firebase, and Gemini API in AI Studio resources and tracks the usage of each resource.
• Projects are linked to a billing account and the billing account calculates and tracks the cost of usage in all of its associated projects.

• To run Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform resources and services in a project, the project must be linked to an active Cloud Billing account.

• One or more projects can be linked to a billing account; a project is linked only to one billing account at a time.

• An application can be configured to use resources in more than one project.

• An application's projects can be linked to different Cloud Billing accounts.

• You can have billing-specific project permissions granted on multiple Google Cloud projects.

• In the Billing section of the Google Cloud console, you can view project costs for one Cloud Billing account at a time.

  • With multi-project permissions granted on a Cloud Billing account, you can access Billing Reports and the FinOps hub to view costs aggregated by all of your projects that are linked to the Cloud Billing account that you are authorized to view.
  • With cost view access limited to projects only, you can access Billing Reports to view costs for your authorized projects, one project at a time.

About project permissions required to access Cloud Billing data

Depending on your level of Cloud Billing access, you can access the tools in Cloud Billing to view costs and other billing data for multiple projects linked to a Cloud Billing account, or you can view billing information for one project at a time.

About Cloud Billing tools for project owners

For the projects that you are authorized to view, the tools in Cloud Billing help you monitor your usage costs, forecast your spending, and identify optimization opportunities to save on costs.

Monitor costs in projects

Cost Reports for project costs

View your billing reports and cost trends. The billing report helps you answer questions like "Which Google Cloud services (such as Compute Engine or Cloud Storage) cost me the most?".

• If you have multi-project accessto a Cloud Billing account, you can use the report's Projects filter to select all of your billing-authorized projects, so you can view costs aggregated across all of the projects you own that are linked to the Cloud Billing account you are viewing.

• If you're accessing Cloud Billing information using project permissions only, then the Reports page is automatically scoped to a single project – the project that you selected in the Google Cloud console before you accessed the Billing section. With single-project access, if you want to select a different project to view cost reports for, then you must exit the Billing section, select a different project using the Google Cloud console project selector, and then access the Billing section again.

  Learn more about cost reports

  Launch the Cloud Billing reports tour

Budgets & alerts for a project

Create a budget for a project and set up spending alerts. For each project that you own, you can use budgets to track your actual Google Cloud spend against your planned spend. Then, set up alerts to stay informed about the costs accruing in each project.

• If you have multi-project accessto a Cloud Billing account, the Budgets & alerts page provides a project picker, so you can switch between projects that you are authorized to view without requiring you to exit billing.

• If you're accessing Cloud Billing information using project permissions only, then the Budgets & alerts page is automatically scoped to a single project – the project that you selected in the Google Cloud console before you accessed the Billing section. With single-project access, if you want to select a different project to view budgets, then you must exit the Billing section, select a different project using the Google Cloud console project selector, and then access the Billing section again.

  Learn more about budgets & alerts

  Walkthrough creating a budget for a project

Cost anomalies for a project

Review anomalies for a project. Anomalies are spikes or deviations in usage costs that differ from your expected spend, when compared to historical spending patterns. With project-level access to billing information, you can review cost anomalies for each of the projects you are authorized to view, one project at a time .

• If you have multi-project accessto a Cloud Billing account, the Anomalies page provides a project picker, so you can switch between projects that you are authorized to view without requiring you to exit billing.

• If you're accessing Cloud Billing information using project permissions only, then the Anomalies page is automatically scoped to a single project – the project that you selected in the Google Cloud console before you accessed the Billing section. With single-project access, if you want to select a different project to view anomalies for, then you must exit the Billing section, select a different project using the Google Cloud console project selector, and then access the Billing section again.

  Learn more about cost anomalies

Optimize and control costs in projects

FinOps hub for multi-project users

View the FinOps hub for recommendations and utilization insights. If you have the Project Billing Costs Manager role on a Cloud Billing account granting you multi-project permissions to access billing, you can view the FinOps hub in the associated Cloud Billing account for all your authorized projects.

When you access the FinOps hub using multi-project permissions, the FinOps hub is scoped to all of your authorized projects that are linked to the Cloud Billing account that you are viewing. Click the Scopeto open the Account managementpage to view the list of projects that are in scope.

With the FinOps hub, you can monitor and communicate your current savings, explore new recommended opportunities to optimize costs, gain utilization insights for potential wasted usage, and plan your optimization goals.

Learn more about the FinOps hub

Automate cost management

Automate cost controls with programmatic notifications. Use programmatic notifications to automate cost control responses when you get a budget or anomaly alert, such as forwarding alerts to other mediums, or controlling your resource usage by adjusting quotas.

Launch the tutorial for automated responses to budget notifications

Learn more about programmatic notifications

Limitations of multi-project views

Project limits in Cloud Billing accounts with multi-project views

The Project Billing Costs Manager role on a Cloud Billing account grants you project-scoped billing account permissions, giving you multi-project access to billing. For projects where you have project-side billing permissions, multi-project access lets you view costs aggregated for your authorized projects linked to a Cloud Billing account. For each billing account, you are limited to 300 projects that can be included in the scope for Cost Reports and the FinOps hub.

If you have project-side billing permissions for more than 300 projects that are linked to the same Cloud Billing account, when you access the Billing section of the Google Cloud console using multi-project billing permissions, you'll see an error message and you'll be redirected to the Billing account management > Your projects page.

When you exceed the project limit for multi-project views, you can still view project costs for one project at a time:

1. On the Billing account management > Your projectspage, locate the project you want to view.
2. Select the billing account for the project to open the Cloud Billing account and view costs for that project in single-project mode.

Aggregated multi-project views limited to Reports and FinOps hub

With only project-side billing permissions granted on Google Cloud projects (but without multi-project access granted on the Cloud Billing account), you can access the following Billing pages in the Google Cloud console to view costs for individual projects, one project at a time :

• Reports
• Budgets & alerts
• Anomalies

With multi-project views (granted by a combination of project-side Google Cloud project permissions and project-scoped permissions on the linked Cloud Billing account), then the following Billing pages in the Google Cloud console let you view costs in the billing account that are aggregated across all of the projects that you are authorized to view:

• Reports
• FinOps hub

Both single-project and multi-project views let you access the Account managementpage, where you can confirm your level of access to view project costs, and which project or projects you are authorized to view billing data.

What's next

Learn more about how to configure multi-project-scoped access to Cloud Billing accounts , including information about roles and required permissions.