Spot VMs (Preemptible)
Spare capacity at a deep, variable discount — Compute Engine can preempt (reclaim) the VM at any time with 30 seconds’ notice.
Spot VMs (the successor to Preemptible VMs) sell spare Compute Engine capacity at large, variable discounts off on-demand. The trade-off is preemption: GCP can shut the VM down whenever it needs the capacity, giving about 30 seconds of notice.
They suit fault-tolerant, batch, and stateless workloads that can checkpoint and resume. The Spot prices shown here are indicative — they vary by region and change over time — so never treat one as a firm quote.
More GCP pricing terms
On-Demand (per-second billing)Per-vCPU / per-GB billingSustained Use Discount (SUD)Committed Use Discount (CUD)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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