An organization is planning to deploy a new workload to Google Cloud. They need an accurate estimate of the likely costs of running the workload. How should the organization create this estimate?

The Google Cloud Pricing Calculator lets organizations configure specific services, regions, machine types, storage tiers, and usage volumes to generate a detailed cost estimate without spending any money. It reflects current Google Cloud pricing and supports adding multiple services together, making it the most accurate and risk-free method for pre-deployment cost planning.

Deploying to a test environment to observe costs incurs real charges and takes time, and test-environment usage patterns may not accurately reflect production workload behavior.

Historic costs of a similar workload may differ significantly due to differences in configuration, data volume, or pricing changes, making the estimate unreliable.

Manually calculating costs from pricing pages is time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to keep current as pricing and discount structures change frequently.