Google Cloud Shell (Storage)
- Free allowance
- 'Cloud Shell provisions 5 GB of free persistent disk storage mounted as your $HOME directory ... on a per-user basis and is available across projects.'
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- retention-clampeddeleted after 120 days
- Evidence
- reported1 source; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | 'Cloud Shell provisions 5 GB of free persistent disk storage mounted as your $HOME directory ... on a per-user basis and is available across projects.' unit GB; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
5 GB hard; 50 h/week quota; VM terminates after 40 min idle (files outside $HOME lost); $HOME auto-deleted after 120 days of no access; web preview is auth-gated, not public. |
| Binding | retention-clamped a clock, not a quota: bytes leave whether or not a user is finished with them |
| Identity | email not published |
| Egress | Not specified in the quotas doc; the intended use is interactive admin, and there is no public-serving path. |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | sftp, scp, ssh, rclone sftp |
| Tooling | gcloud cloud-shell ssh, cloudshell scp, SFTP; the $HOME is a real ext4 disk you can rclone into. |
| Composes with | 5 GB per Google account, shared across all that account's projects. High account value (it's also a free shell with gcloud auth), so it chains well for *tooling*, not for capacity. |
| Reliability | Genuinely persistent and genuinely small. The 120-day deletion is real and is announced by email only. |
Evidence 1
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | docs.cloud.google.com/shell/docs/quotas-limits | '5 GB of free persistent disk storage mounted as your $HOME'; 'default weekly Cloud Shell quota is 50 hours'; 'don't access Cloud Shell for 120 days, Cloud Shell automatically deletes your $HOME' |
More fields 1
{
"dead_end": {
"failure_class": "quota",
"why": "'Cloud Shell provisions 5 GB of free persistent disk storage mounted as your $HOME directory ... on a per-user basis and is available across projects.'",
"retry_when": null,
"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"
}
}Unknown values 5
$.identity_cost.detailboilerplate$.per_object_cap.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.per_object_cap.statedthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.statedthe field may be stated in a source that was not read