When Google Cloud falls below its 99.99% uptime commitment, you are owed service credits. Here is exactly how the Compute Engine (Instance / Region) schedule works, and how to claim what you are due.
Service credits are calculated against your monthly bill for the affected service, based on its Monthly Uptime Percentage.
| Monthly uptime | Equivalent downtime | Service credit |
|---|---|---|
| 99.0% – < 99.99% | 4 min/mo – 7.2 hrs/mo | 10% |
| 95.0% – < 99.0% | 7.2 hrs/mo – 36 hrs/mo | 25% |
| Below 95.0% | 36 hrs/mo – 720 hrs/mo | 100% |
GCP credits are not automatic, and not every outage counts. Check each condition below before you spend time building a claim.
Compute Engine reaches 99.99% only with instances across two or more zones in a Region. A single instance is covered at 99.9%. Confirm which Monthly Uptime Percentage applies to your layout before measuring.
Google measures Downtime as a period of one or more consecutive minutes of unavailability, then totals it across the billing month. Isolated sub-minute errors generally do not register.
Downtime from your software, your network, or factors outside Google reasonable control is excluded from the Monthly Uptime Percentage calculation.
The GCP window is the tightest of the three majors. The clock starts when you become eligible, effectively when the outage occurs, so act fast.
Credits are not automatic. You have 30 days to file. Follow these steps.
Find which Google Cloud service (Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, GKE) dropped below its Monthly Uptime Percentage using Cloud Monitoring and the Service Health dashboard.
Capture Cloud Monitoring uptime checks, error logs, and the precise downtime intervals. Google requires the dates and times of each incident.
Submit the request to Google Cloud Support within 30 days of becoming eligible, including all supporting documentation of the downtime.
Financial Credits are issued as a percentage of the monthly bill for the affected service and applied to a future billing cycle.
Enter your spend and downtime to see what GCP owes you.
A complete evidence pack is the single biggest factor in getting a credit approved on the first pass. Tick each item off as you collect it, then export the list for your ticket.
Gather every item below before you file. Complete evidence is the single biggest factor in getting a credit approved on the first pass.
Fill in your incident details and we will write a claim email in GCP's own terms, with the credit math already worked out. Copy it, attach your evidence, and send.
Review before sending. Figures are estimates based on GCP's flagship compute SLA. Attach your evidence and verify against your current agreement.
Run your spend and downtime through the calculator, then use this guide to file inside the window.