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GCP Cloud : Day 06 - GCP Billing

In GCP, billing is managed separately from resources. Resources live in Projects, but charges are accumulated in a Billing Account.

Organization
│
├── Folder
│   └── Project A
│
├── Folder
│   └── Project B
│
└── Billing Account
     ├── Project A
     └── Project B

A project can only be linked to one billing account at a time, but a billing account can be linked to multiple projects.

  • Multiple Projects, One Billing Account: Common in organizations.
Billing Account
│
├── ecommerce-dev
├── ecommerce-stage
├── ecommerce-prod
└── shared-services
  • Multiple Billing Accounts: large organizations often separate costs.
Organization
│
├── Engineering Billing
│   ├── Project A
│   └── Project B
│
└── Marketing Billing
    ├── Project C
    └── Project D

Billing Account

A Billing Account is where Google charges for resource usage.

It contains:

  • Payment method (credit card, bank account, invoicing)
  • Billing reports
  • Budgets and alerts
  • Cost exports
  • Payment history

Example:

Billing Account
Name: Production Billing
ID: 012345-6789AB-CDEF12

Project Charges

Every billable resource belongs to a project. Google calculates the cost of each resource and charges the linked billing account. The amount appears under the project’s billing report.

Project: ecommerce-prod
├── VM Instances
├── Cloud SQL
├── Load Balancer
└── Storage Bucket

Budgets and Alerts

You can set spending limits and notifications. Example:

Budget: ₹10,000/month

50% -> Email alert
80% -> Email alert
100% -> Email alert

Note: - Budgets do not automatically stop resources. - They only send alerts unless you create automation to act on them.

Labels and Cost Allocation

Projects and resources can be tagged with labels. Example:

environment=production
team=backend
application=ecommerce

This allows billing reports like:

  Team	    Monthly Cost
Backend	      ₹25,000
Frontend	  ₹10,000
Data Team	  ₹15,000

Billing Export to BigQuery

For detailed cost analysis, export billing data BigQuery.

Example queries:

Cost by project
Cost by service
Cost by label
Daily spending trends

Many FinOps teams use BigQuery for custom dashboards.

Key Rules

  • Key Rules to Remember
  • Resources live in Projects.
  • Projects are charged through a Billing Account.
  • One Project → One Billing Account.
  • One Billing Account → Many Projects.
  • Organizations and Folders do not receive charges directly; costs roll up from Projects.
  • Budgets alert you but do not automatically stop spending.
  • Labels and BigQuery exports are essential for tracking costs in larger environments.
August 20, 2026 ∙