Is running Wordpress on Google's free tier (Compute Engine/micro/1gb) free?

[Sunny84]

I used Google cloud for only one thing and one thing only, from January 2023 until today: installing the 1-click wordpress installation.

Nothing else, with my knowledge, was installed or added other than the one instance of Compute Engine, mirco, 1 gb which is part of the Free Tier.

I have google analytics connected to my website and it says that I've had zero visitors since January (not even I myself have accessed my site since installing it, due to being busy). So thus I am definitely within the threshold of the "free tier" max bandwidth/usage, and my disk space is well under the 1 GB limit as well.

Yet even though I have had no visitors to my site in the past 4 months, I see today when reviewing my reports that every month since I installed wordpress, I was charged at least $2 per month.

What's even funnier, is that my domain expired on March 27th, and even though my domain expired, which literally means that the entire month of April my website simply did not even exist anymore, I was STILL charged $1.76!!

When talking to billing they have no idea why. They didn't understand English or something. Or just confused. One of the 5 people I talked to told me that she thought it was because of an API that was apparently installed without my knowledge... and when I asked if this API was required for wordpress, she told me no it was not. So then why was it installed in the first place?? Who knows if what she says was true... problably not because the other 4 people i talked to afterward had no idea what i was talking about and said the only API was compute Engine's API.

So if there is an API that comes with Compute Engine only (and not wordpress), then why does it say all over the docs that Compute Engine is part of the free tier, if it's true that the API WAS THE REASON why I was charged?

Or if this API is required with a wordpress installation, then why do both the Free Tier docs and the Wordpress docs not mention that this API that charges money, is a requirement to run wordpress? Shouldn't we be forewarned that installing wordpress would cost money, especially since a lot of people are attracted to the Compute Engine free tier?

As you can see, this is really confusing and frustrating. Everywhere I look online says that people have been able to have a free wordpress site using free tier on Compute Engine. Maybe that has changed though since January? I would really appreciate an explanation.

[VishalBulbule]

Hello

1st Thing - Google free trial is only for 90 Days .

2nd - Compute Instance pricing is for running instance , it does not matter if you install anything on it or not. If your instance us up and running Google will charge you based on pricing model.

If no visitor visited to your site , if domain expired these things are not affecting for compute instance pricing and can affect only egress charge.

[Sunny84]

Hello,

Thank you so much for your time in trying to help me understand this.

I do know that the free trial is for only 90 days. I was not referring to the free trial, however.

If you look on this page, it explains how the 90-day free trial is a completely different thing than the free tier, which is available to all users even AFTER the first 90 days of the free trial. So that's what I am referring to here.

The Compute Engine micro instance is Always Free in the "free tier", as long as I do not go past the monthly-allowed limits, and those limits are 30 GB standard persistant disk (which I have less than that) and "1 GB network egress from North America to all region destinations" (explained on this page).

So with no egress traffic (no one knows it exists, not even the search engines), and being under the disk limit, I should have not had any charges whatsoever.

So why do you think I was told that those charges were from an API that I had running on my instance of Compute Engine, that I never manually/intentionally installed myself? If the only thing I installed was Wordpress, does this mean that this API that was costing me money, is a requirement to have along with the wordpress installation? If so, I just wonder why we are not forewarned about this on the 1-click wordpress installation page? And if not required, then why is this API automatically installed and we are not told to disable it or it will cost us money? The docs are all very confusing and they should be updated, but no one understands my "user experience", and I'm trying to report this because this is fraudulent (not telling their customers about any charges incurred with anything they say to us is "free").

What do I need to do to run wordpress for free without having to have this API that is not part of the free tier? Is all the blogs that tell us we can have a free wordpress site with Google's free tier lying? Is the support person who told me about this API wrong, and it's somethign else that's costing me money, that is installed along with wordpress? How can I find out what that is? Billing has no clue and I'm not going to pay $30 for a month of "tech support" just to get a simple question of whether or not wordpress can be a part of the always free tier, and if so, HOW do we configure the installation to not have this costly API forced along with it?

If anyone knows anyone who has a wordpress site on Google cloud's free tier please ask them how they were able to do this... I am at a loss.

Thank you!

[VishalBulbule]

You can check which sku charged you in detailed billing as compute api is used in multiple resources. You can export your billing and still feel charges are unfair , raise it with Google . I am also a community member just like you trying to raise helping hand to cloud explorer.

[Sunny84]

Okay how do I do that differently than what I've already done (brought this up with 5 different billing support reps)? No one knows and no one is helping me. Is there a different support page I need to do this? How do I raise it? Thanks again!

[Andrew_Tyt]

HI,

You should open the Billing page in your GCP console and change "Group by" to SKU after that you will see in the down table what SKU exactly you pay. I can be network, IP, disk (your instance has a boot disk and you will pay 24/7 for it), etc

Best regards

Andrew