GCP Free Tier and Google Cloud Credits in India, 2026 Guide
Saurav Jagdale
Technical Lead, Unico Connect
In this article
- Quick Answer
- Key Takeaways
- What do you get with the Google Cloud free trial?
- Which Google Cloud products are always free?
- Does the GCP free tier work in the Mumbai and Delhi regions?
- How does the Google Cloud free trial compare with AWS and Azure?
- What is the Google for Startups Cloud Program?
- Who does not qualify for Google Cloud startup credits?
- How do you apply for Google Cloud startup credits?
- Are there credits for moving an existing workload to Google Cloud?
- How do you make Google Cloud credits last?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- How Unico Connect helps teams building on Google Cloud credits
The first thing to check about the GCP free tier in India is where it applies. The Always Free virtual machine exists only in three US regions, so a small API on a virtual machine in Mumbai has no free allowance to fall back on once the $300 trial is over. The trial itself works in any region, Mumbai and Delhi included. The bigger money is in Google Cloud credits from the Google for Startups Cloud Program, up to $200,000, or $350,000 for AI first startups, and its Scale tier leaves out startups that have raised only from angels. This guide covers each offer in turn, with every figure checked against the official pages in September 2026.
Quick Answer
The GCP free tier sits inside the Google Cloud Free Program, which has two main parts plus a few product trials. New customers get a $300 free trial credit for 90 days, usable in any region, including Mumbai, asia-south1, and Delhi, asia-south2. The Always Free tier adds monthly allowances on more than twenty products, but the free Compute Engine VM and free Cloud Storage apply only in US regions, so a virtual machine in India is billed once the trial ends.
For startups, the Google for Startups Cloud Program gives up to $2,000 on its Start tier, for companies founded in the last 24 months, and up to $200,000 over two years on Scale, or $350,000 for AI first startups. Scale needs a company founded in the last five years with a qualifying venture round, and angel money does not count.
Key Takeaways
- For an app serving Indian users, we would start on Cloud Run in Mumbai. Its free compute and request allowance applies there in full and it scales to zero, while the free VM exists only in Oregon, Iowa and South Carolina.
- The $300 trial works in asia-south1 and asia-south2 for 90 days, and trial resources are deleted after the 30 day grace period unless you upgrade.
- BigQuery, Firestore, Pub/Sub and the GKE cluster fee keep free monthly allowances with no region condition listed.
- Scale tier credits need an institutional or venture equity round, SAFEs included, and more than $5,000 of earlier Google Cloud credits rules you out.
- RaMP migration funding needs each workload to be projected to add at least $60,000 a year of eligible Google Cloud spend, so it suits established estates more than early stage startups.
What do you get with the Google Cloud free trial?
New customers get a Free Trial billing account with $300 of Welcome credit, valid for 90 days. Nothing is billed during the trial, and the credit covers most products, including usage above the Always Free limits. You qualify only if you have never paid for Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform or Firebase and have not used the trial before.
Signup asks for a card or other payment method. A temporary authorisation hold of up to $1 may show on your statement, and it is not a charge. Google lists American Express, Mastercard and Visa cards, and Visa or Mastercard debit cards, as accepted payment methods, but not prepaid cards or debit cards that need two factor authentication. RuPay is not on the list, so a credit card on one of the listed networks is the safest card to have ready. Depending on your country, Google may also ask you to verify a bank account.
Plan for day 90 before you build anything you want to keep. If you have not upgraded to a paid billing account by then, or you use up the $300 sooner, the Free Trial billing account closes, billing is disabled on your projects and every resource created during the trial is stopped. A 30 day grace period follows, and upgrading within it might let you recover the stopped resources and data. After that the trial resources are permanently deleted. Upgrading ends the trial, but any unused credit stays with you until day 90 and the Always Free allowances continue. The trial cannot be paused or extended. We would set a calendar reminder for day 80 and decide then whether to upgrade.
Read the trial restrictions before you plan a proof of concept on it, especially an AI one. While the account is a Free Trial account you cannot add GPUs to virtual machines, create Windows Server virtual machines, use Google Cloud Marketplace, request a quota increase or create Google Cloud VMware Engine resources, and cryptocurrency mining is prohibited. The $300 credit cannot pay for the Gemini API in Google AI Studio or for third party generative AI models offered as a managed API. Upgrading to a paid billing account lifts these limits, though the remaining credit still covers only products covered by the Free Trial.
Which Google Cloud products are always free?
The Always Free tier has no end date, though Google can change it with 30 days notice. Allowances are counted per billing account each month, they do not roll over, and anything above them is billed at standard rates. The table below covers the main allowances and the region condition Google attaches to each.
Google Cloud Always Free allowances and where they apply, September 2026
| Product | Free every month | Region condition |
|---|---|---|
| Compute Engine | One e2-micro VM, 30 GB months of standard persistent disk, 1 GB of outbound transfer from North America | US only, Oregon, Iowa or South Carolina |
| Cloud Storage | 5 GB months of regional storage, 5,000 Class A and 50,000 Class B operations, 100 GB of outbound transfer from North America | US only, Oregon, Iowa and South Carolina |
| BigQuery | 1 TiB of querying and 10 GiB of storage | None listed |
| Cloud Run | Request based billing, 2 million requests, 360,000 GiB seconds of memory and 180,000 vCPU seconds. Instance based billing, 240,000 vCPU seconds and 450,000 GiB seconds | No US condition for compute, valued at Tier 1 prices. Mumbai is Tier 1, Delhi is Tier 2. The 1 GB of free outbound transfer applies within North America only |
| Cloud Run functions, 1st gen pricing | 2 million invocations, 400,000 GB seconds, 200,000 GHz seconds, 5 GB outbound | None listed |
| App Engine standard environment | 28 hours a day of F1 instances, 9 hours a day of B1 instances, 1 GB of outbound transfer a day | None listed. Standard environment only |
| Firestore | 1 GiB of storage, and 50,000 reads, 20,000 writes and 20,000 deletes per day, per project | None listed |
| Google Kubernetes Engine | The cluster fee for one Autopilot or zonal Standard cluster | None listed. Nodes and networking are billed |
| Pub/Sub | 10 GiB of messages | None listed |
| Cloud Build | 2,500 build minutes on e2-standard-2 | None listed |
| Logging | First 50 GiB of log data per project | None listed |
| Agent Runtime on Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, the renamed Vertex AI | 180,000 vCPU seconds and 360,000 GiB seconds | None listed |
A few products also run their own trials once you have a billing account. Spanner has a 90 day free trial instance with 10 GB of storage. AlloyDB for PostgreSQL has a 30 day trial cluster with an 8 vCPU basic instance and 1 TB of storage, and Cloud SQL and Looker offer 30 day trial instances. Cloud SQL has no Always Free allowance, so an app that keeps its data in Cloud SQL pays for the database once that 30 day trial ends.
If all you want is to try BigQuery, use the BigQuery sandbox. It needs no credit card or billing account and gives 10 GiB of storage in total and 1 TiB of querying a month. Tables expire after 60 days, and streaming and DML statements are not supported, so it suits learning and one off analysis.
Does the GCP free tier work in the Mumbai and Delhi regions?
Some of it does, but not the two allowances most hobby projects are built on. The free virtual machine and the free storage bucket exist only in the United States. An API on an e2-micro in Iowa stays free within the monthly limits. Move the same API to Mumbai so Indian users get a fast response, and it is billed from the first hour after the trial.
Leaving a prototype or an internal tool in a US region is fine while you experiment. Every request crosses an ocean, though, and customers in India will notice the delay.
For a product with Indian users and little traffic so far, we would start on Cloud Run in Mumbai. Its compute allowance is not tied to US regions. Google applies it as a spending based discount valued at Tier 1 prices, and its Cloud Run pricing page lists asia-south1 as a Tier 1 region, so the full monthly allowance applies there. Delhi, asia-south2, is billed at Tier 2 prices, so the same discount covers less usage. The 1 GB of free outbound transfer applies only within North America, so responses to users in India are billed at standard network rates. Because the service scales to zero, a lightly used API in asia-south1 can still cost very little.
If the product needs a virtual machine of its own, budget for a paid one in Mumbai or Delhi from the start. Our guide to Google Cloud pricing in India shows what that looks like on the invoice.
How does the Google Cloud free trial compare with AWS and Azure?
Google offers the biggest trial credit of the three. AWS gives you the longest to spend its credit, and Azure the shortest.
- Google Cloud gives new customers $300 over 90 days, plus more than 20 Always Free products with no end date.
- AWS gives a new account $100 of credits at signup and up to $100 more for trying key services. On the AWS Free plan the account closes after six months or when the credits run out, unless you upgrade to a paid plan. AWS also lists more than 30 always free services.
- Azure gives a $200 credit to use within 30 days, 12 months of free monthly amounts on more than 20 popular services, and more than 65 always free services. Microsoft says the 12 months of free Azure services are not currently available to customers in India who sign up directly for pay as you go, so start from the Azure free account if you want them.
On any of the three, check that the allowance you are counting on applies in an Indian region before you choose on credits alone. Our comparison of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud covers the wider choice.
What is the Google for Startups Cloud Program?
It is the credit program Google runs for early stage companies, and for a funded startup it is worth far more than the $300 trial. There are two tiers. Start is for young technology companies with a working MVP that plan to raise venture funding soon. Scale is for venture funded startups, with a larger allowance inside it for AI first companies. Credits apply to Google Cloud services and selected offerings, including Google models such as Gemini and Gemma. Third party models and Google Cloud Marketplace offerings are billed directly and are not covered. The table sets out each tier as Google publishes it on its startup benefits page, and Google alone decides who is accepted.
Google for Startups Cloud Program tiers in 2026
| What you get | Start tier | Scale tier | Scale tier, AI first startups |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | Technology startups with a working MVP planning to seek venture funding soon | Venture funded startups, Pre Seed or Seed raised in the last five years, or Series A in the last twelve months | Scale tier startups with AI built into the core product and strategy, not added as a bolt on layer |
| Company age | Founded in the last 24 months | Founded in the last five years | Founded in the last five years |
| Earlier credits allowed | None beyond the free trial | Up to $5,000 | Up to $5,000 |
| Google Cloud credits | Up to $2,000, valid for one year | Up to $200,000 over two years | Up to $350,000 over two years |
| How credits are paid out | Credits valid for one year | Year one covers 100% of usage up to $100,000. Year two covers 20% up to another $100,000 | Year one covers 100% of usage up to $250,000. Year two covers 20% up to another $100,000 |
| Extras | $200 of Google Skills credits and Google Workspace Business Plus free for 12 months for new signups | $500 of Google Skills credits, Workspace Business Plus free for 12 months for new signups, $600 a month of Google Maps Platform credits on a separate application, up to $12,000 of Enhanced Support credits for one year, a Startup Success Manager and Startup Customer Engineers | As Scale, plus dedicated AI training, resources and experts. Credits cover Google models such as Gemini and Gemma, not third party models |
Who does not qualify for Google Cloud startup credits?
Startups whose funding does not fit Scale miss out on that tier, and some kinds of organisation are excluded from the program altogether.
For Scale, Google counts equity investment from institutional investors and venture capital firms, and it accepts SAFE agreements, the Simple Agreement for Future Equity. It does not count angel funding, friends and family money, crowdfunding, prize funding, private equity or government innovation grants. That rule hits Indian founders whose first money came from angels or a government scheme.
Some of those startups have another route. Google says it may evaluate startups funded by angels, crowdfunding or friends and family for the Start tier, and those funded by private equity or government innovation grants for its other tiers. Start has its own age limit, 24 months from founding. So on the published criteria, a startup older than two years that has raised only from angels meets neither tier. If a venture round is close, apply once it has closed. A Series A counts for Scale only for 12 months after the round.
Google also excludes some organisations outright. The list covers companies that have gone public or been acquired, educational institutions, government entities, nonprofits, personal blogs, cryptocurrency mining businesses, and dev shops, consultancies and agencies. If you are building a product inside a services company, apply through the product company.
How do you apply for Google Cloud startup credits?
You apply on the Google for Startups Cloud Program page, and there is no tier to pick. Google matches each eligible startup to the tier that fits its stage, and acceptance is at its discretion. Sort out four things before you apply.
- Create the Google Cloud billing account first. The application asks for its 18 character ID, and that account is where the credits land.
- Apply from your company email, not a Gmail address. Google approves credits only when your website domain, your email domain and the email domain on the billing account all match.
- Make the round easy to verify. For Scale, Google asks for links to public online sources about your equity round, not a pitch deck. A startup in stealth verifies its funding through its investor.
- Count the credits you already have. More than $5,000 of earlier Google Cloud credits puts Scale out of reach. The Start tier allowance of up to $2,000 stays under that line.
The Google Workspace Business Plus perk is only for new signups. Your company domain must not have had a paid Workspace plan from 31 days before you apply up to the day you request the perk, so a startup already paying for Workspace should not count on it.
Google says in its startup program FAQ that most applicants hear back within a few business days, and applications that need manual review can take 10 days or more. If you are rejected, Google points applicants to their account manager or to cloudstartupsupport@google.com.
Are there credits for moving an existing workload to Google Cloud?
Google Cloud funds qualifying migrations through its Rapid Migration and Modernization Program, RaMP, once each workload has a projected annual run rate of at least $60,000 of eligible Google Cloud spend. A general workload is then eligible for service funds of up to 20 percent of that run rate, capped at $2 million, plus quarterly Google Cloud credits on the growth of its tagged spend, and specialised types such as VMware, Oracle and SAP carry higher percentage rates. That threshold suits mid sized and larger estates, so an early stage startup should plan its move without counting on it. Google sets the RaMP terms and decides who qualifies. Our Google Cloud migration guide walks through the RaMP assessment and workload tagging.
How do you make Google Cloud credits last?
Set a budget and an alert on the billing account on day one, while everything is still free. An alerts only budget warns you but does not stop spending. Google also has a spend cap budget, in preview, that pauses one eligible service in one project, such as Cloud Run or the Gemini API, once its cost before credits passes the cap. It is open only to accounts billed directly by Google, not to reseller accounts. Where it is available, we would switch it on for every development project. Beyond that, stay on serverless or small machines until traffic proves otherwise, shut down idle GPU instances, since no free allowance covers them, and schedule development projects so they do not run overnight.
Price the architecture as if the credits did not exist, because year two of the Scale tier covers only 20 percent of usage. When the credits end, committed use and Spot discounts take over, and our Google Cloud cost optimization guide explains how they apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Google Cloud free trial available in India?
Yes. New customers in India get the same $300 of Welcome credit valid for 90 days, and it can be spent in the Mumbai and Delhi regions. You need a valid payment method at signup.
Does the Google Cloud free tier include a free VM in India?
No. The Always Free e2-micro virtual machine applies only in the Oregon, Iowa and South Carolina regions. A virtual machine in asia-south1 or asia-south2 is billed once the trial credit is used or expires.
What is always free on Google Cloud?
Monthly allowances on more than twenty products, including 1 TiB of BigQuery querying, 2 million Cloud Run requests, 2 million Cloud Run functions invocations, 1 GiB of Firestore storage per project, 10 GiB of Pub/Sub messages, and the cluster fee for one GKE Autopilot or zonal cluster. The Compute Engine and Cloud Storage allowances are limited to US regions.
How much are Google Cloud startup credits?
Up to $2,000 on the Start tier, up to $200,000 over two years on the Scale tier, and up to $350,000 over two years for AI first startups on Scale. On Scale, year one covers all usage up to $100,000, or $250,000 for AI first startups, and year two covers 20 percent of usage up to another $100,000.
Can Indian startups apply for Google Cloud credits?
Yes. The published eligibility rules are based on company age, funding and past credits rather than country. Scale requires a qualifying venture or institutional equity round, shown through publicly available sources about the round. Startups funded by angels, crowdfunding or friends and family may be evaluated for the Start tier, which requires founding within the last 24 months.
Do angel investments qualify for the Google Cloud Scale tier?
No. Google lists angel funding, friends and family money, crowdfunding, prize funding, private equity and government innovation grants as not qualifying for Scale. SAFE agreements from venture investors do qualify, and angel funded startups may be evaluated for the Start tier instead.
Do Google Cloud credits cover Gemini?
Google for Startups Cloud Program credits cover Google models such as Gemini and Gemma, but not third party models offered on Google Cloud, which are billed directly. The $300 free trial credit is narrower. It cannot pay for the Gemini API in Google AI Studio or for third party generative AI models offered as a managed API, although Google AI Studio has its own free tier for many Gemini models.
What happens when the Google Cloud free trial ends?
If you have not upgraded to a paid billing account by day 90, or you spend the full $300 earlier, the Free Trial billing account closes and its resources are stopped. A 30 day grace period follows, in which upgrading might recover the stopped resources and data. After it, the trial resources are permanently deleted. Google does not charge you automatically when the trial ends.
Can the Google Cloud free trial be extended?
No. Google does not allow the Free Trial to be paused or extended. If you upgrade to a paid billing account before it ends, any unused credit stays available until day 90 from signup, and the Always Free allowances continue after that.
Can you try Google Cloud without a credit card?
Partly. The BigQuery sandbox needs no credit card or billing account and gives 10 GiB of storage in total and 1 TiB of querying each month, with tables expiring after 60 days. Firebase has a no cost plan and Google AI Studio has a free tier for many Gemini models. The $300 Google Cloud free trial itself needs a card or other payment method at signup.
How long does Google take to approve startup credits?
Google says most Google for Startups Cloud Program applicants hear back within a few business days, and applications that need manual review can take 10 days or more. Apply from an email on your company website domain, with the ID of the billing account the credits should go to.
How Unico Connect helps teams building on Google Cloud credits
Unico Connect is a certified Google Cloud partner and reseller in India, based in Mumbai. As an agency we cannot receive startup credits or get anyone accepted, because Google alone decides. What we do is the work around the credits, designing architectures that stay cheap in Mumbai and Delhi, putting budgets and alerts on the billing account from the first day, and costing out the month the credits stop.
