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Google Compute Engine (Linux VMs)

cloud.google.com/products/compute/pricing/general-purposeCloud VMcompute/gcp-computeJSON compare report an error provider JSON

Sibling records disagree:

identity_kind: compute/gcp-compute says card, compute/gcp-windows says email

Free allowance: 1 non-preemptible e2-micro instance for the whole of each month in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, with 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk and 1 GB a month of outbound transfer from North America; the allowance is counted in hours, not instances
Verdict: caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
Cost: free tier
Identity: cardcard required, no phone
Binding limit: request-rate1 e2-micro instance's worth of hours a month, counted across every e2-micro in the three eligible US regions
Evidence: documented2 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-23checked 2026-10-23 (live); stale on 2026-11-23

Free tier	1 non-preemptible e2-micro instance for the whole of each month in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, with 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk and 1 GB a month of outbound transfer from North America; the allowance is counted in hours, not instances unit hours; metered on wall-clock
Price	none stated
Limits	request-rate (binding) 1 e2-micro instance's worth of hours a month, counted across every e2-micro in the three eligible US regions source per-object-cap 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk; 1 GB a month of North American outbound transfer source write-gated GPUs and TPUs are never in the free tier; adding one is billed from the first second source not stated
Identity	card 'You won't be charged until you activate your full paid account' and the $300 welcome credit require a payment method to activate the paid account; the free tier itself is available to an eligible customer, quoted from cloud.google.com/free read 2026-10-22
Egress	not stated
Per-object cap	not stated
Retention	not stated
Interface	unknown
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Evidence note	documented the Google Cloud free-tier list and the free-features document were both read on 2026-10-22. The free tier is a monthly usage allowance that does not expire, which is a different product from the USD 300 credit the record carried; the credit is a 90-day trial that sits beside it
Parsed numbers	per-object-cap 30 GB

Evidence 2

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-02	cloud.google.com/products/compute/pricing/general-purpose	not published
2026-10-22	cloud.google.com/products/compute/pricing/general-purpose	'1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM instance per month in one of the following US regions: Oregon, Iowa, South Carolina. 30 GB-months standard persistent disk. 1 GB of outbound data transfer from North America', and 'Your Free Tier e2-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance ... free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month', and 'GPUs and TPUs are not included in the Free Tier offer', quoted

More fields 13

{
 "keep_rate": 1.0,
 "keep_rate_basis": null,
 "billing_model": "unclassified",
 "shape": {
  "vcpu": 2,
  "ram": 1,
  "disk": 30,
  "gpu_class": null,
  "gpu_count": null,
  "note": "e2-micro: 2 vCPU on a shared core, 1 GiB, 30 GB standard persistent disk"
 },
 "session_cap": {
  "wall_clock_min": null,
  "idle_reap_s": null,
  "restart_required": false,
  "note": "the allowance is the total hours in the month, so a single always-on e2-micro consumes all of it; the clock resets monthly, not on activity"
 },
 "persistent_storage": null,
 "network_out": null,
 "price_note": null,
 "free_tier_kind": "allowance",
 "granularity": {
  "min_billed_s": 60,
  "rounding_s": null
 },
 "burst_x": 1.0,
 "ps": {
  "gib": 30,
  "price": "30 GB-months included, then standard PD rates",
  "durability": "persistent disk",
  "on_stop": true,
  "on_destroy": false,
  "retention": "while the disk exists"
 },
 "net": {
  "out": true,
  "in": true,
  "ports": "any",
  "static_ip": false,
  "ipv6": false,
  "allowance": "1 GB a month outbound from North America"
 }
}

Unknown values 10

$.chaining a source was read and is silent on this field
$.egress.metered egress metering was not published
$.egress.terms a source was read and is silent on this field
$.interface the access interface was not established
$.limits_note a source was read and is silent on this field
$.per_object_cap.stated a source was read and is silent on this field
$.reliability_note nothing of this kind was observed
$.retention.notes the field may be stated in a source that was not read
$.retention.stated a source was read and is silent on this field
$.tooling a source was read and is silent on this field

Corrections

2026-10-22 Google Cloud's free tier is a recurring usage allowance, and the record priced it as a credit