Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Google Cloud's messaging service, billed per TiB of throughput with message storage charged separately by the GiB-month.
- Queues and background jobs
- Yes
- Not documented
- Not documented
Who it suits.
Google Cloud systems that want messaging without capacity planning — throughput is metered rather than provisioned, and 10 GiB a month costs nothing.
Consider something else if…
Throughput counts bytes both in and out, so a message read once is billed twice, and retention is a storage charge rather than an included window — the headline $40 per TiB is not the whole bill.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
What the documentation says.
Each value below links to the page it was read from, with the sentence it came from. Criteria Google Cloud Pub/Sub does not publish are not listed.
Pricing
Free tier
Yes
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Every calendar month, the first 10 GiB of throughput identified as the Message Delivery Basic SKU for a billing account is free.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing model
Three meters: throughput at $40 per TiB counting both publish and subscribe, storage at $0.27 per GiB-month for anything retained beyond a day, and data transfer when throughput crosses a zone or region boundary. Pub/Sub Lite is a separate product priced on reserved capacity rather than usage.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Throughput costs for message publishing and delivery [...] Data transfer costs associated with throughput that crosses a Google Cloud zone or region boundary [...] Storage costs associated with retaining messages [...] Pub/Sub Lite throughput and storage charges, by contrast, are based on reserved capacity.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Observability
Ingest price per GB
$40 per TiB, which is $0.039 per GiB, for standard publish and subscribe throughput in every Google Cloud region.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“After that, the price is $40 per TiB in all Google Cloud regions.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Queues
Included per month
10 GiB of throughput free per billing account per calendar month, then $40 per TiB. Throughput counts bytes written to a topic plus bytes read from a subscription, so a message published once and read once is billed twice. BigQuery and Cloud Storage subscriptions are $50 per TiB and the 10 GiB does not apply to them; import topics run $50 or $80 per TiB by source.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“the first 10 GiB of throughput [...] is free. After that, the price is $40 per TiB in all Google Cloud regions. [...] BigQuery subscriptions cost $50 per TiB [...] Import topics (for Cloud Storage, Azure Event Hubs, AWS MSK, or Confluent Cloud) cost $80 per TiB”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Maximum message size
Pub/Sub bills on bytes rather than message count; the pricing page states no per-message size ceiling and prices throughput and storage instead.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Throughput is the total number of bytes written (publish throughput) to a Pub/Sub topic or read (subscribe throughput) from a subscription to a topic over an interval of time.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs
Message retention
Retention is configurable and charged rather than granted: $0.27 per GiB-month for messages a topic is configured to retain, for snapshots, and for a subscription's backlog older than one day. A subscription's default retention is 7 days.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Storage costs of $0.27 per GiB-month are charged for the following: A topic is configured to retain messages [...] an attached subscription with message retention duration set to the default of 7 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.