Get recommendations for committed use discounts

Committed use discount (CUD) recommendations help you optimize the resource costs of the projects in your Cloud Billing account. CUD recommendations are generated automatically using a formula that analyzes historical and recent usage metrics gathered by Cloud Billing, and includes usage covered by existing commitments. You can apply these recommendations to purchase additional commitments and further optimize your Google Cloud costs.

Recommendations are available for resource-based commitments for Compute Engine, and spend-based commitments for eligible products, including Compute Engine flexible commitments.

Refer to the guides on this page to learn about the following tasks:

For more information about the Recommender service, see the Recommender overview.

Understand commitment recommendations

Committed use discount recommendations let you identify spending and usage patterns in your Google Cloud projects. Your spending patterns generate recommendations for spend-based commitments, including Compute Engine flexible commitments, and your usage patterns on Compute Engine generate recommendations for resource-based commitments. The recommendations for resource-based commitments also account for your use of custom machine types on Compute Engine. Purchasing the recommended commitments helps you optimize your Google Cloud costs.

Permissions required to view and modify recommendations

Depending on your needs, ask you administrator to assign the following predefined IAM roles:

  • If your Cloud Billing account has discount sharing enabled for resource-based commitments, you need one of these roles on the Cloud Billing account:

    • To view recommendations only, assign the Billing Account Viewer (roles/billing.viewer) role.
    • To view and modify recommendations, assign the Billing Account Administrator (roles/billing.admin) role.

    Learn how to assign these roles to manage access to a Cloud Billing account.

  • If your Cloud Billing account does not have discount sharing for resource-based commitments, you need one of these roles on each project attached to your Cloud Billing account that has purchased committed use discounts:

    • To view recommendations only, assign the Viewer (roles/viewer) role on the projects.
    • To view and modify recommendations, assign the Owner (roles/owner) or Editor (roles/editor) role on the projects.

    Learn how to assign these roles to manage access to projects.

If you are using custom roles, update the custom role to include the following individual permissions:

(Click to expand) Permissions required for custom roles

Permissions to simulate scenarios for CUD savings

  • To simulate scenarios based on list prices, you need billing.cudrecommendations.generateDefaultPriceSavingRecommendation
  • If you have a custom pricing contract, you need billing.cudrecommendations.generateCustomPriceSavingRecommendation to simulate scenarios based on your custom prices.

Permissions to view recommendations

To view spend-based CUD recommendations:

  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentRecommendations.get
  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentRecommendations.list
  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentInsights.get
  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentInsights.list
  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentRecommenderConfig.get

To view resource-based CUD recommendations:

  • recommender.usageCommitmentRecommendations.get
  • recommender.commitmentUtilizationInsights.get
  • recommender.usageCommitmentRecommendations.list
  • recommender.commitmentUtilizationInsights.list

Permissions to modify recommendations

To modify spend-based CUD recommendations:

  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentRecommendations.update
  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentInsights.update
  • recommender.spendBasedCommitmentRecommenderConfig.update

To modify resource-based CUD recommendations:

  • recommender.usageCommitmentRecommendations.update
  • recommender.commitmentUtilizationInsights.update

View recommendations

There are different ways to view your committed use discount recommendations.

To view commitment recommendations that apply to all the usage for your Cloud Billing account, use the FinOps hub.

To view commitment recommendations for a specific project that you own, use the Cost recommendations page in the Recommendations Hub in the Google Cloud console.

To view the committed use discount recommendations for your Cloud Billing account, do one of the following:

View all recommendations for a Cloud Billing account View recommendations scoped to a specific project

    If you have Cloud Billing account permissions, you can get CUD recommendations for all the usage billed to the Cloud Billing account, using the FinOps hub.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open the FinOps hub.

    Go to FinOps hub

  2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account for which you want to view CUD recommendations.

    If there are CUD recommendations available for your Cloud Billing account, they are in the Top recommendations section.

  3. To view detailed information about a recommendation, click the recommendation.

    If you have permissions for a specific project, get resource-based CUD recommendations for the project in the Cost recommendations page in the Recommendation Hub.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open the Cost recommendations page in the Recommendation Hub.

    Go to Cost recommendations
  2. Select the project for which you want to view CUD recommendations.
  3. To view detailed information about a recommendation, click the recommendation.

Interpret the recommendation summary

The following is an example of a recommendation summary for a spend-based CUD recommendation, with the chart that shows how the recommendation is calculated. At a high level, the recommendation is based on your resource utilization, how much of your usage you want to cover with CUDs, and your existing CUDs. The chart shows you the level of utilization at which you'll save costs by signing up for a commitment.

Example of a spend-based committed use discount recommendation summary.

Estimate your optimal usage

Usage insights

For a brief explanation of how your spend-based recommendation was calculated, see the Usage insights section of the recommendation. Usage insights explains the break even point for your commitment purchase. For example, your usage insight will look similar to this, depending on the details of your CUD recommendation:

"If $1.02/hr is spent for at least 263 days (72% of 1 year), you will break even with this CUD purchase."

Example of how to calculate your optimal usage

To estimate the resource utilization at which you'll break even on your costs, subtract the CUD discount percentage from 100. For example, if you get a recommendation for a 1-year Cloud SQL CUD with a discount of 25%, the resource utilization at which you'll break even is 100% - 25% = 75%.

To understand the estimate, consider Cloud SQL usage of $100 at list price. If your Cloud SQL instances run at 100% uptime, and you sign up for a 1-year spend-based CUD at a 25% discount, you'll pay $100 - (25% of $100) = $75 for your usage.

If the uptime for your Cloud SQL instances reduces to 80%, your list price is $80, but with a commitment, you'd pay $75 for your usage, which still gives you a ($80 - $75) / $80 = 0.0625 or a 6.25% discount on the list price.

Similarly, at 75% uptime, your costs are the same as if you were paying the list price, and at less than 75% uptime, you no longer save money by signing up for a commitment.

For a brief explanation of how your spend-based recommendation was calculated, see the Usage insights section of the recommendation.

Simulate scenarios for spend-based CUDs savings

In the FinOps hub, you can use a spend-based CUD recommendation as a starting point to simulate various usage scenarios, and customize the recommendation to purchase a commitment that maximizes your savings.

Go to FinOps hub

Create a CUD scenario model

  1. To start customizing a spend-based recommendation in the FinOps hub, click the recommendation you want to model.
  2. On the recommendation's details page, click Create a scenario.

  3. In the scenario modeling tool, use the options that best reflect your usage. Some of the ways you can customize the recommendation are as follows:

    • Recommendation based on usage history section: By default, the recommendation is based on the last 30 days of usage. To analyze your usage over a longer time, change the number of days of history to consider.

      To exclude dates where you might have had atypical usage, such as a period where you had unusually high demand, enable Ignore usage history from specific days, and specify a time range.

      The recommendation is recalculated based on the number of days that you select and the dates that you exclude.

    • CUD term section: You can select a 1-year or 3-year term for the CUD scenario model. The recommendation is recalculated if you change the selected term.

For example, the following screenshot shows a CUD scenario model recommendation for the purchase of a 3-year Compute Engine Flexible CUD, based on the previous 60 days of usage, but excludes usage between May 12, 2024 and May 18, 2024.

Example of a committed use discounts scenario.

Usage insights in the scenario model

In the CUD scenario model, the Usage insights section provides a brief explanation of how your spend-based recommendation was calculated. Usage insights for the scenario include your historical spending patterns for the recommended amount, and explains the break even point for your commitment purchase. For example, your usage insights will look similar to this, depending on the details of your CUD scenario model:

  • "Historically this billing account has spent the recommended amount of $2.20/hr for 31 out of last 53 days, on resources covered by this CUD."
  • "If $2.20/hr is spent for at least 592 days (54% of 3 years), you will break even with this CUD purchase."

Share the CUD scenario model

To share the scenario's configuration with others, click Copy to clipboard to copy a link that you can share. When your recipients open the link, they see the scenario with the parameters that you chose, and with updated information about additional usage that occurs before they open the link.

Apply recommendations to purchase additional commitments

After you've reviewed the recommendation and selected the options that meet your needs, you can start the purchase process.

Review and purchase resource-based recommendations

While viewing your commitment recommendations, open the recommendation's details page, and follow these steps:

  1. Click Review and purchase at the bottom of the page.

    • For spend-based commitment recommendations, review the pre-populated fields in the Purchase a committed use discount form for accuracy.

      If your Cloud Billing account is billed in non-USD currency, your cost and savings estimates are displayed in both USD and your local currency.

      Learn more about spend-based commitments, including Compute Engine flexible commitments

    • For resource-based commitment recommendations, you are redirected to the Compute Engine section of the Google Cloud console, where you can complete your purchase using the Purchase a committed use discount form.

      You might be prompted to select a project. This is the project where the commitments are purchased. Ensure that the Compute Engine API is enabled in the selected project, and that you have sufficient permissions on the project to purchase resource-based commitments.

      The fields in the purchase form are pre-populated based on the recommendation. Review the fields for accuracy, and update any values as needed.

      Learn more about resource-based commitments for Compute Engine

  2. To complete the purchase process, after reviewing the form, click Purchase.

Dismiss recommendations

To no longer see a particular recommendation, you can dismiss it. This prevents all users from seeing the recommendation in Cloud Billing FinOps hub or Recommendation Hub pages.

To dismiss a recommendations for your Cloud Billing account, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open the FinOps hub for your Cloud Billing account.

    Go to FinOps hub

  2. At the bottom of the Potential savings/month section, click View all recommendations.

  3. In the list of recommendations, click Actions, then select Dismiss.

Configure your default CUD recommendation settings

To customize the CUD recommendations that you get, configure your recommendation settings using the following steps. Your configuration settings are applied within one business day.

  1. Go to the Committed use discounts (CUDs) page in the Billing section of the Google Cloud console.
  2. Select Configure recommendations
  3. Enter your preferred coverage threshold as a percentage. If the coverage threshold is less than the default 100%, the recommender produces only "optimal" recommendations.
  4. Choose your preferred commitment term duration(s).
  5. View your recommendations by visiting the Recommendations page.