gcloud-costs

Google Cloud Costs & Billing

You are helping the user understand their Google Cloud billing and costs.

Usage

/gcloud-tools:gcloud-costs
/gcloud-tools:gcloud-costs cloud run costs
/gcloud-tools:gcloud-costs this month
/gcloud-tools:gcloud-costs blue-harbour-marketing

When to use: When you want to check GCP spending, billing, costs, budgets, or understand what you're being charged for.

What you can ask:

• Current month's costs (overall or by service/project)
• Cloud Run, Artifact Registry, or Cloud Build usage
• Budget status and alerts
• Cost optimisation recommendations
• Clean up unused resources

What you get back: A formatted cost summary table with recommendations for savings.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS — Optional: a project ID, date range, or specific query (e.g. "this month", "cloud run costs", "all projects").

What to do

Run the relevant gcloud commands below based on what the user asks. Present results in a clear, readable format with totals and highlights.

1. Billing account overview

# List billing accounts
gcloud billing accounts list

# Show which projects are linked to billing
gcloud billing projects list --billing-account=BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID

2. Current costs via BigQuery billing export

If BigQuery billing export is enabled:

# Query costs for current month
bq query --use_legacy_sql=false "
SELECT
  project.id AS project,
  service.description AS service,
  ROUND(SUM(cost), 2) AS cost,
  currency
FROM \`PROJECT_ID.billing_dataset.gcp_billing_export_v1_BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID\`
WHERE invoice.month = FORMAT_DATE('%Y%m', CURRENT_DATE())
GROUP BY project, service, currency
ORDER BY cost DESC
"

3. Cost estimates via Cloud Run metrics

For Cloud Run specifically (most common for this user):

# List all Cloud Run services across projects
gcloud run services list --format="table(metadata.name, status.url, metadata.labels.'cloud.googleapis.com/location')"

# Get usage metrics for a specific service
gcloud run services describe SERVICE_NAME --region=REGION --format="yaml(status.traffic, spec.template.spec.containers[0].resources)"

# Check number of revisions (each consumes resources)
gcloud run revisions list --service=SERVICE_NAME --region=REGION --format="table(metadata.name, status.conditions[0].status, metadata.creationTimestamp)"

4. Cost breakdown using billing CLI

# Get cost breakdown for current billing period
gcloud billing budgets list --billing-account=BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID

# Describe a specific budget
gcloud billing budgets describe BUDGET_ID --billing-account=BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID

5. Quick cost check via gcloud

# List all enabled APIs (each may incur costs)
gcloud services list --enabled --project=PROJECT_ID

# Check Artifact Registry storage (images consume storage)
gcloud artifacts docker images list REGION-docker.pkg.dev/PROJECT_ID/REPO_NAME --format="table(package, createTime, updateTime)" --sort-by=~createTime --limit=10

# Check Cloud Build history (builds consume compute)
gcloud builds list --limit=10 --format="table(id, status, createTime, duration, source.storageSource.bucket)"

6. Cost optimization tips

After gathering data, provide actionable advice:

• Idle Cloud Run services with 0 req/sec — suggest deleting or scaling to 0 min instances
• Old container images in Artifact Registry — suggest cleanup to reduce storage costs
• Multiple projects with similar services — suggest consolidation
• Unused APIs — suggest disabling to avoid accidental charges
• Cloud Build frequency — if building often, consider caching layers

7. Clean up unused resources

# Delete a Cloud Run service
gcloud run services delete SERVICE_NAME --region=REGION --project=PROJECT_ID

# Delete old images (keep latest N)
gcloud artifacts docker images list REGION-docker.pkg.dev/PROJECT_ID/REPO_NAME --format="value(package)" --sort-by=createTime | head -n -3 | xargs -I{} gcloud artifacts docker images delete {} --quiet

# Disable unused APIs
gcloud services disable API_NAME --project=PROJECT_ID

Presentation format

Always present costs in a clear table format:

## GCP Cost Summary

**Billing Account:** My Billing Account (01215E-8780EA-F709E1)
**Period:** March 2026

| Project | Service | Cost (USD) |
|---------|---------|-----------|
| blue-harbour-marketing | Cloud Run | $0.00 |
| blue-harbour-marketing | Artifact Registry | $0.12 |
| blue-harbour-marketing | Cloud Build | $0.05 |
| **Total** | | **$0.17** |

### Recommendations:
- Service X has 0 requests — consider deleting to avoid minimum charges
- 15 old container images found — clean up to save storage costs

Known user context

• Primary billing account: 01215E-8780EA-F709E1 (My Billing Account)
• Primary project: blue-harbour-marketing (project number: 72678620841)
• Region: australia-southeast1
• Other projects on same billing: Check with gcloud billing projects list
• gcloud CLI: Available locally

Important rules

• Always show costs in the user's currency
• Highlight any services with $0 usage that could be deleted
• Flag any unexpected or high costs
• Keep commands on single lines (no backslash line continuations)
• If BigQuery billing export isn't set up, suggest enabling it for detailed cost tracking
• Cloud Run free tier: 2 million requests/month, 360,000 GB-seconds, 180,000 vCPU-seconds — mention when relevant