GCP Filestore cost: you pay for provisioned capacity by tier

Quick answer

Filestore bills per GB-month of provisioned capacity by tier: Basic HDD is cheapest (around $0.20/GB-month), then Basic SSD, then Zonal and Enterprise for higher performance and availability. Each tier has a minimum capacity, and you pay for provisioned, not used, capacity. Match the tier to the performance need and avoid over-provisioning size.

Filestore is managed NFS on Google Cloud, priced by provisioned capacity and tier. Because you pay for the capacity you allocate regardless of how much you use, and each tier has a minimum size, the tier and size you choose set the bill.

Tiers trade performance for cost

Tier	Best for	Cost
Basic HDD	Capacity-oriented, general file shares	Lowest (~$0.20/GB-month)
Basic SSD	Higher performance file shares	Higher
Zonal / Enterprise	High performance, scale, availability	Highest

Basic HDD is the cheapest per gigabyte and fine for general-purpose or capacity-oriented shares. Basic SSD costs more for better performance. Zonal and Enterprise tiers offer higher performance, larger scale, and better availability at correspondingly higher rates. The tier is the biggest cost lever.

Provisioned capacity and minimums

You pay for the capacity you provision, not the data stored, and each tier has a minimum size (often several hundred gigabytes to terabytes). So a small share on a high tier pays for the minimum whether or not you fill it. Provision close to real need rather than rounding up generously.

Controlling Filestore cost

Choose the lowest tier that meets the performance requirement, provision capacity close to actual need given the tier minimum, and delete instances you no longer use since they bill for provisioned capacity continuously. For workloads that do not need NFS semantics, object storage (Cloud Storage) is far cheaper per gigabyte, so use Filestore only where a shared file system is genuinely required, the same match-the-tool discipline as choosing EFS, EBS, or S3.

FAQ

How is GCP Filestore priced?

Per GB-month of provisioned capacity by tier: Basic HDD is cheapest (around $0.20 per GB-month), then Basic SSD, then Zonal and Enterprise for higher performance and availability. Each tier has a minimum capacity, and you pay for provisioned, not used, capacity.

Which Filestore tier is cheapest?

Basic HDD, at around $0.20 per GB-month, suitable for capacity-oriented and general-purpose file shares. Basic SSD costs more for better performance, and Zonal and Enterprise tiers cost the most for high performance, scale, and availability.

Does Filestore charge for provisioned or used capacity?

Provisioned. You pay for the capacity you allocate regardless of how much data you store, and each tier has a minimum size. A small share on a high tier still pays for the tier minimum, so provision close to real need.

How do I reduce Filestore cost?

Choose the lowest tier that meets the performance requirement, provision capacity close to actual need given the tier minimum, delete unused instances since they bill continuously, and use object storage (Cloud Storage) instead where NFS semantics are not required.

Filestore or Cloud Storage for cost?

Cloud Storage is far cheaper per gigabyte and scales without provisioning, so use it wherever object storage suffices. Filestore is worth its higher cost only when you genuinely need a shared POSIX file system with NFS semantics that object storage cannot provide.

Does C3X estimate Filestore cost?

C3X prices the google_filestore_instance resource, including its tier and provisioned capacity, from your Terraform, so the capacity cost appears before deploy, including tier minimums that can make small shares more expensive than expected.

What to do next

Right-size your file storage before you deploy. C3X reads your Terraform and prices Filestore and the rest of your stack against a live catalog. Start with the quickstart.