With over 900+ partners and software integrations, real-time data analysis at the scale of 110+ TB per second via BigQuery, and industry-leading security infrastructure powered by frontline threat intelligence from Mandiant, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers a cloud ecosystem built for performance and trust. But as powerful as GCP is, managing its costs can get complicated fast. Many teams find themselves flying blind when it comes to understanding where their cloud dollars are actually going. That’s where a Google Cloud cost optimization tool can make all the difference.
To help you get started, we’ve rounded up the top 5 GCP FinOps tools that bring visibility, accountability, and optimization to your GCP cost management efforts.
What are the best cost optimization tools for GCP?
1. Ternary
Ternary launched in February 2021 as the dedicated third-party FinOps platform for GCP.
Our platform is built on Google Cloud, using BigQuery for the backend. BigQuery’s flexible data-loading methods, coupled with its security and governance controls, enable our platform to easily marry cost and utilization data while maintaining data integrity across customer and partner tenants. There is no other FinOps-native company that understands your GCP cost drivers and challenges like we do.
Key features of Ternary for GCP cost optimization:
- SaaS or Self-Hosted deployment flexibility.
- Agentless Kubernetes monitoring.
- Deep cost visibility and allocation using intuitive custom labeling.
- Waste identification and rightsizing recommendations for compute, storage, database, Kubernetes, and data warehouse services.
- Support for Flex/Spend and Resource-based Committed Use Discounts.
- Machine-learning powered, human tunable anomaly detection.
- Built-in case management workflows for team collaboration.
Rackspace Technology praised Ternary for being one of the best GCP cost management platforms in the market:
Ternary is a very well-thought-out cost management platform for GCP—one of the best, from what I’ve seen in the market, and from a feature set standpoint. Ternary is also a very good relation to have overall, if you’re in the GCP business.
Akshay Jituri, Cloud Cost Optimization Specialist, Rackspace Technology
2. Google Cloud native tools
Sometimes you want to work with what you already have, especially if it’s already baked into the Google Cloud Platform. GCP offers a built-in cloud cost optimization software suite that’s accessible right from the Cloud Console.
That said, Google’s native tools are distributed across several hubs. Today, Google Cloud cost tools are spread across:
- Recommendation Hub (for actionable optimization insights)
- FinOps Hub (for financial KPIs and optimization)
- And Cloud Hub (for connecting cost to operational performance)
This can be both helpful and tricky. Helpful because each hub gives focused insights for different users. Tricky because sometimes they can create a fragmented experience for users like you trying to manage cloud costs holistically.
Here are a few key features in the GCP cost management toolkit:
- Google Cloud pricing calculator. Lets you estimate what your cloud setup is really going to cost. You can tweak variables like compute power, storage, and traffic before you commit to anything.
- Cloud billing reports. Detailed visualizations of your costs, split by service, project, or team. Helpful for when you need to trace your budget back to the people who accidentally spun up a, let’s say, $4,000 VM for testing.
- Google Cloud recommender. This is GCP’s AI-powered tool that checks your usage and drops suggestions for saving money, like downsizing over-provisioned resources or switching to more cost-effective pricing models.
- Billing export to BigQuery. If you like building your own dashboards or just enjoy data spelunking, you can export all your cost data and go full DIY. This is a great feature for teams that want deep insights without relying on external tools.
3. Kubecost
Kubecost is focused on Kubernetes, and more specifically, on those clusters you’ve spun up in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
Where some tools just give you total cost, Kubecost drills down to the pod, namespace, and service level. It’s built for teams that want full visibility without full-blown overhead.
Here’s what Kubecost does best:
- Real-time cost monitoring. Benefit from up-to-the-minute cost data across your Kubernetes clusters. So you’ll see the impact on your budget almost immediately.
- Granular cost tracking. Kubecost maps spending to specific Kubernetes components like deployments, namespaces, services, and even individual pods. It can perform a Google Cloud optimization analysis down to the decimal.
- Cost governance. Kubecost allows you to create budget alerts to help prevent cost overruns.
4. Harness
Best known as a software delivery platform, Harness goes deep into app-level cost visibility so teams can take ownership of their cloud spend.
It solves one of the biggest headaches in cloud-native environments: answering the deceptively simple question, “How much is my application costing us?”.
Here’s how Harness earns its spot among top-tier GCP cost optimization tools:
- GCP inventory management. You can better understand resource utilization with visibility into your Compute Engine virtual machines, and unused disks and snapshots.
- Container cost optimization. Harness looks at what you should save based on real usage patterns. The platform continuously monitors resource trends and recommends rightsizing actions for containers.
- AutoStopping rules. Manage your non-production cloud resources with Harness. Save on costs by automatically shutting down idle resources when not in use and seamlessly restarting them when needed.
5. ProsperOps
In 2024, ProsperOps, a niche solution for autonomous discount management, expanded to Google Cloud. Regarded as one of the top rate optimization solutions for AWS, ProsperOps’s decision to expand to additional clouds was a no-brainer.
Their GCP solution helps you manage Google Cloud Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for Google Compute Engine, GKE, Cloud Run, and Cloud SQL. This ensures that your discount coverage remains optimal, preventing you from overcommitting or overlooking potential savings. The system is fully autonomous, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak settings to match your risk tolerance and savings goals.
ProsperOps also keeps things simple. Instead of overwhelming you with dashboards, it highlights key KPIs and savings insights. You quickly see what matters.
Here are a few key features of ProsperOps:
- Portfolio management. It adapts in real time to usage changes.
- Custom settings. You can set coverage preferences based on risk tolerance.
- Pricing. ProsperOps has a pay-as-you-save pricing model.
Honorable mentions
There are many multi-cloud FinOps platforms that support Google Cloud. However, not all offer the same depth of features they provide for AWS. If we were to make a list of every tool that claims to offer Google Cloud optimization, our list of top solutions would be longer. Nevertheless, we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge a few additional FinOps tools in the market.
- CloudHealth, recognized as one of the leading platforms in the market, is a first-generation FinOps solution with limited GCP functionality. It does showcase Google Compute Engine rightsizing opportunities; however, it does not provide commitment-based discount recommendations for GCP.
- Cloudability, another notable first-generation solution in the market, has rightsizing for Compute Engine and Google Persistent Disk. It provides Committed Use Discount recommendations for Compute Engine and Cloud SQL.
- CloudZero provides a handful of resource utilization insights for GCP. CloudZero is a ProsperOps partner when it comes to rate optimization.
- Finout‘s CostGuard feature provides a handful of idle resource detection and rightsizing recommendations for GCP, but their My Commitments feature only supports AWS.
Final thoughts
Each tool we explored offers unique strengths, but if you’re looking for a purpose-built platform that’s native to Google Cloud and designed to scale with your FinOps maturity, Ternary stands out.
Our platform bridges the gap between visibility and action and lets teams take control of their cloud spend without compromising innovation.
See what the leading Google Cloud cost optimization tool can do for your team.
FAQs
What are the challenges in optimizing GCP costs?
Common challenges in optimizing GCP costs include:
- Lack of visibility
- Unpredictable usage spikes
- Underused resources
- Difficulty aligning cloud spend with business metrics
Without the right tools, managing these factors manually can be time-consuming and error-prone.
What factors should you keep in mind when choosing a GCP cost optimization tool?
Look for tools that provide granular cost breakdowns and actionable insights. Compatibility with GCP services, ease of use, and support for FinOps workflows also matter.
What are the top GCP cost optimization best practices?
To optimize costs in GCP, you can start by terminating idle instances, rightsizing key resources, purchasing Committed Use Discounts, and implementing detailed cost monitoring with budgets and alerts.
