Cost Cloud Logging ingestion after exclusion filters and the free tier, plus retention beyond the default 30 days.
Cloud Logging charges once for ingestion and then again for retention beyond 30 days, and the only lever that reduces ingestion is an exclusion filter — sinks route a copy elsewhere but do not reduce what you already ingested. That is why the exclusion saving is shown separately from the sink line. Logging bills are dominated by high-volume, low-value entries such as load-balancer health checks, and excluding those is usually a one-line filter that removes a third of the bill. Confirm the per-GiB ingestion and retention prices in the Google Cloud pricing calculator, and remember the free allotment is per project rather than per organisation.
GCP Logging Cost
billed GiB = volume × (1 − exclusions) − free allotment; cost = billed GiB × ingestion price + retained GiB × extra retention months × retention price + sink storage.
billed GiB = volume × (1 − exclusions) − free allotment; cost = billed GiB × ingestion price + retained GiB × extra retention months × retention price + sink storage. Cloud Logging charges once for ingestion and then again for retention beyond 30 days, and the only lever that reduces ingestion is an exclusion filter — sinks route a copy elsewhere but do not reduce what you already ingested. That is why the exclusion saving is shown separately from the sink line.
Logging bills are dominated by high-volume, low-value entries such as load-balancer health checks, and excluding those is usually a one-line filter that removes a third of the bill. Confirm the per-GiB ingestion and retention prices in the Google Cloud pricing calculator, and remember the free allotment is per project rather than per organisation.
This calculator takes 11 inputs: Log volume generated, Volume removed by exclusion filters, Free ingestion allotment, Ingestion price per GiB, Retention configured on the bucket, Retention days included free, Retention price per GiB-month, Volume routed to a Cloud Storage sink, Sink storage price per GiB, Volume queried through Log Analytics, Analytics query price per GiB. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
No. An exclusion filter drops entries so they are never ingested and never billed. A sink copies entries to another destination and the original ingestion is still charged, so use sinks for retention or analysis and exclusions for cost.