Google Cloud Storage buckets are elastic, that is, you definitely pay for what you use, not what you allocate. That's great. However, there are a couple bits around their pricing that you should be certain to keep in mind:
- Access charges on nearline and coldline buckets: Recall that the hot bucket types (regional and multiregional) have relatively high storage charges, but no access charges. On the other hand, the cool and cold bucket types (nearline and coldline) do have access charges, and these can become quite substantial. Say you back up a laptop to a coldline bucket and want to retrieve all of that data because the laptop crashes, you might find yourself paying access charges not that different from the cost of an old laptop. So think through your use cases for the different bucket types very carefully. Again, I can't emphasise...
