Practical guide
Estimate Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk billing
Forecast Google Cloud block-storage cost from provisioned capacity, disk type, runtime, and provisioned Hyperdisk performance.
Updated · Sources checked
Provisioned capacity drives the first estimate
Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk are durable block-storage products. Google bills provisioned storage capacity from volume creation until deletion, including disks attached to stopped or suspended VMs and unattached volumes. Start the estimate with disk type, location, provisioned GiB, and the hours the volume exists, rather than the VM’s running hours.
For example, a 500 GiB disk retained for a 730-hour month represents 365,000 GiB-hours. Multiply that by the selected disk’s current GiB-hour rate. Two 500 GiB replicas double the quantity before snapshots or performance settings. This rate-free calculation avoids importing a price from a different disk type or region.
Hyperdisk may have performance charges
Capacity is not the complete Hyperdisk model. Google documents that Hyperdisk and Extreme Persistent Disk can bill provisioned performance. Hyperdisk Balanced can bill provisioned IOPS and throughput, while Hyperdisk ML bills its configurable throughput. Enter only performance actually provisioned, then check included performance and regional price-sheet details.
Snapshots, images, licensing, VM compute, and egress are separate estimates. Resizing a disk may be a cost decision as well as a capacity decision. Deleting an unused durable volume stops future capacity charges, but verify data-retention and backup requirements first.
Build a defensible forecast
Inventory every boot, data, replica, and unattached disk. Record type, GiB, location, performance settings, and planned lifetime. Flag non-production disks that survive after a test environment stops. Compare provisioned capacity with observed utilization, but do not shrink capacity below operational recovery and growth needs.
Use the Persistent Disk / Hyperdisk Cost Calculator for the capacity and performance inputs, and the Compute Engine calculator for VM runtime.
FAQ
Does stopping a VM stop disk charges?
No. Google states durable storage remains billable while provisioned.
Is IOPS usage the same as provisioned IOPS?
No. For applicable disks, billing follows configured performance, so model the provisioned amount.