Per-vCPU / per-GB billing
GCP prices compute and memory as separate resources, so a machine price is vCPUs × core rate + GB × memory rate.
Compute Engine publishes a per-vCPU-hour rate and a per-GB-hour rate for each machine series. A predefined machine type is just a fixed bundle of those two resources, and its price is the sum. Custom machine types let you pick the vCPU and memory yourself, priced by the same two rates.
This is why the GCP explorer shows normalized $/vCPU and $/GB columns natively — they are the actual billing units, not a derived convenience. The custom-machine calculator uses the exact same rates.
More GCP pricing terms
On-Demand (per-second billing)Sustained Use Discount (SUD)Committed Use Discount (CUD)Spot VMs (Preemptible)Custom machine typesExtended memoryMachine series (E2, N-series, C-series, M-series)Axion & Arm (C4A)Sole-tenant nodesEffective price at 100% monthly useNormalized pricing ($/vCPU, $/GB)Max saving %Best price region
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