GCP Logging Cost Calculator

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.