Does the E2-Micro come under the GCE Free Tier?

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I had a F1-micro instance created that was part of the Compute Engine Free Tier. A month ago i received an email stating

... We’ve identified that you’re using an F1-micro instance that is a part of the Compute Engine Free Tier. As we improve the experience of the Free Tier, we will be introducing the E2-micro VM, which is a part of a second generation VM family. It offers additional resources for your use, specifically 0.25 vCPU (which burst to 2 vCPU periodically) and 1 GB of RAM.

What do I need to know? The Free Tier F1-micro VM is changing to the E2-micro VM as the VM to use for free. On August 1, 2021, E2-micro Free Tier will be introduced. Follow these steps to change your machine type to E2-micro to avoid incurring charges for continuing to use F1-micro after August 31, 2021.

What do I need to do? Starting August 1, 2021, change the machine type from F1-micro, or stop your existing F1-micro instance and begin using a E2-micro instance. VMs created with either method will automatically have the Free Tier discount applied to them. The supported regions will remain the same. ...

So i went ahead and changed it to an E2-micro and all went well.

Today i have a need to create a brand new instance so i removed the existing E2 instance(which was created mostly to test waters so to speak) and started the process to (re)create an E2-Micro instance from scratch.

I chose the correct options for region/zone and when i chose the E2-micro option i find that the discount isn't applied.

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When i choose a F1-micro i see the discount applied. See the text 'Your first 720 hours....' (which apparently needs to exist for the discounts to be applied per this (rather outdated) article).

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Is this just a case of the documentation not reflecting the actual facts as yet? Can i go ahead and continue creating the E2-micro despite not seeing the information regarding the free-tier appliecation applied?

Note: I did send an email with my queries to the official ID but haven't got a response yet. So as suggested on the support pages I am using one of the supported community-support options, Stackoverflow.

google-compute-engine
1 Answers

The machine type e2-micro is part of the free tier, when creating the instance it shows an estimated cost just to show how much it would cost, this doesn't mean you will be charged. The discount is applied once the VM instance is running and it will be reflected on the billing reports.

The billing reports get updated daily, but if you would like to know your monthly estimate you can see it in the section where it shows you the $7.12 charge, you just need to remove the instance cost.

Your Free Tier e2-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance. Each month, eligible use of all of your e2-micro instances is free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month. Usage calculations are combined across the supported regions.

Compute Engine free tier does not charge for an external IP address. GPUs and TPUs are not included in the Free Tier offer. You are always charged for GPUs and TPUs that you add to VM instances.

Refer compute engine pricing for more information.

I would recommend you to contact the Sales team if you have any further billing related questions.

user_157451530
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