Practical guide
What drives Cloud Load Balancing cost
Understand why rules, processed bytes, proxies, and connected Google Cloud services can change a load-balancing estimate.
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Find the metered path
The useful load-balancing question is which rules and bytes Google bills for the chosen product. Google documents forwarding-rule and data-processing charges, and documents proxy-instance charges for some Envoy-based load balancers. A serverless NEG can add load-balancer costs to Cloud Run or App Engine costs rather than replacing them.
As rate-free math, if traffic doubles from 2 TiB to 4 TiB with rules unchanged, the data quantity doubles while fixed rule-hours do not. If five extra rules run all month, the fixed quantity rises by 5 × 730 hours. Measure both before optimizing anything.
Cloud CDN can avoid load-balancer transit for cached static objects under the documented rules, while Cloud Armor may block unwanted requests before they transit. Those services have their own bills and should be compared as a total path. Use the Cloud Load Balancing Cost Calculator and validate against billing export SKUs.
FAQ
Can cached content lower load-balancer processing?
Google says cached Cloud CDN objects do not transit through the load balancer.
Is logging free?
Check the relevant Cloud Logging pricing separately.