Google Cloud Compute Engine 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee.

How Software Advice ensures transparency

Software Advice lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Users can talk to our advisors for free to receive software recommendations matching their needs. Software providers pay us for sponsored profiles to reach users interested in their products.

How Software Advice verifies reviews

Software Advice carefully verified over 2 million reviews to bring you authentic software experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI.

Independent research methodology

Researchers at Software Advice use a mix of verified reviews, independent research, and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or talk to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology.

On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Google Cloud Compute Engine

4.1

(10)

Pricing

Starting at $0.01 per month

About Google Cloud Compute Engine

Google Cloud Compute Engine delivers configurable virtual machines running in Google’s data centers with access to high-performance networks and storage. Users can configure their virtual machines by choosing a machine type and adding one or more resources such as CPUs, memory, local SSDs or HDDs, or GPUs. Use the built-in load balancing options to spread out an application's workload between multiple instances of services.

Google Cloud Compute Engine Screenshots

Google Cloud Compute Engine Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $0.01 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$0.01

usage based, per month

No plan information available

Google Cloud Compute Engine Features

Popular features found in Virtualization
Archiving & Retention
Capacity Management
Namespace Management
Version Control
More features of Google Cloud Compute Engine
Configuration Management
Data Migration
Load Balancing
Resource Management
Virtualization
Virtual Machine Monitoring

Google Cloud Compute Engine User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.1

Ratings Breakdown

40%

50%

10%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.4

Value for money

4.0

Customer support

4.0

Functionality

4.8

Have you used Google Cloud Compute Engine and would like to share your experience with others?

Verified

Reviewer

Computer Software

11-50 employees

Used monthly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2025

Simple to Start, But Some Features Need assistance.

It was amazing like I liked some of the features which are not available on other platforms.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I like that it is easy to set up and provides fast, scalable virtual machines. The pricing is also low.

Cons:

The pricing structure can be difficult to learn, and setting up networking and permissions requires some learning for the new users

Reasons for switching to Google Cloud Compute Engine

I wanted to explore more option for virtual machines.

raj s.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2023

Google Cloud Compute Engine

my overall experience is good and Google Cloud Compute Engine is easy to create vm

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Google Cloud Compute Engine's integration with other Google Cloud services. The platform makes it easy to integrate with other Google Cloud offerings, such as Google Cloud Storage and Google Kubernetes Engine, which can help users build more complex applications and solutions.

Cons:

Google Cloud Compute Engine's integration with third-party tools and services can be limited, which can make it challenging to use with certain applications or workflows.

Reasons for choosing Google Cloud Compute Engine

Google Cloud Compute Engine platform is costly and aws ec2 offer more third party services then google cloud compute engine

Reasons for switching to Google Cloud Compute Engine

Google Cloud Compute Engine platform is costly

Jo M.

Verified reviewer

Accounting

2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2025

BPF restriction forced me to AWS

Poor, Average. Messy and hard to use, works well though. The ability to create things with the CLI was nice, though my overall experience with them specifically having initial settings avoid the components for always free was rough.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Connected and respected. They have a deep set of documentation, that is extensive though disorganized.

Cons:

I was unable to run an e2 instance with cilium due to bpf restrictions. Certainly a requirement they chose not to fulfill because of the cost of needed changes.

George M.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

2-10 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2023

GCP has the best documentation for Cloud Computing

It was the best experience I had with a Google product.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I was new to Cloud Computing but the easy to use documentation gave me the best introduction to cloud computing. I was able to build my first VPN, run my first virtual machine and do lots of stuff. The $300 credit was a good thing also

Cons:

I cant name anything I disliked about the process.

Reasons for choosing Google Cloud Compute Engine

Very good documentation, ease of use, free $300 credit and support from GCP twitter

Verified

Reviewer

Logistics and Supply Chain

201-500 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2022

Great VM service from Google Cloud

We needed a simple way to deploy a lightweight web app which we need to secure using Google OAuth. Google Compute Engine together with Identity Aware Proxy enabled us to deploy this very quickly without custom authentication code.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

I like the configuration and customization UI of Google Cloud Compute Engine. It's the easiest to use among the equivalent products among the major cloud providers.

Cons:

So far, I do not have anything I dislike about Compute Engine.

Reasons for choosing Google Cloud Compute Engine

We were using Google Workspace for our employees. The integration with IAP is so convenient in securing our lightweight internal app.

Verified

Reviewer

Financial Services

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2022

Try VM with Google cloud compute engine.

Overall experience is very positive and great VM machine , continue to use in future with great and affordable price.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I most liked about Google cloud compute engine is nested virtualization and data migration feature.

Cons:

Everything feels good in Google cloud compute engines , only one thing affect me is find difficulty to connect the apache sever to cloud, all other is great.

Verified

Reviewer

Information Technology and Services

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed November 2022

Virtualization on Compute Engine

My overall experience is very good with the google compute engine as the pricing is low,feature set is rich and almost everything is at one place.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Best feature is pay for what you use only.Doesnt matter since when or how much powerful vm have you created you only get charged for time when the machine is running.

Cons:

I dont think that is least liked by me everything so far is good i am loving using compute engine.

Fabiano A.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

501-1000 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed February 2023

Macchine virtuali alla portata di tutti

Utilizzato a lavoro per sviluppare un piccolo backend per servire una app mobile sviluppata

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Bastano poche configurazioni per avere una macchina virtuale operativa su cui subito sviluppare o eseguire altre operazioni

Cons:

Può in casi rari volerci molto per creare la macchina virtuale

Nikhil F.

Verified reviewer

Telecommunications

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed November 2022

Best virtual machine service

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Easy to use, easy to deploy virtual machine, scalability is the best feature which I like, we can scale up and scale down the server as the production demand

Cons:

It is bit expensive as compared to other cloud service provider

Ebenezer B.

Verified reviewer

Financial Services

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Google Cloud is the best all time