GCP SLA credits, explained
When Google Cloud misses its 99.99% uptime commitment, you’re owed service credits. Here’s exactly how the Compute Engine (Instance / Region) schedule works — and how to claim what you’re due.
- Uptime SLA
- 99.99%
- Downtime budget
- 4 min/mo
- Claim window
- 30 days
- Max credit
- 100%
GCP credit schedule
Service credits are calculated against your monthly bill for the affected service, based on its Monthly Uptime Percentage.
| Monthly uptime | Equivalent downtime | Service credit |
|---|---|---|
| 99.0% – < 99.99% | 4 min/mo – 7.2 hrs/mo | 10% credit |
| 95.0% – < 99.0% | 7.2 hrs/mo – 36 hrs/mo | 25% credit |
| Below 95.0% | 36 hrs/mo – 720 hrs/mo | 100% credit |
Do you qualify for a GCP credit?
GCP credits aren’t automatic, and not every outage counts. Check each condition below before you spend time building a claim.
Your instances span multiple zones
Compute Engine reaches 99.99% only with instances across two or more zones in a Region. A single instance is covered at 99.9%. Confirm which Monthly Uptime Percentage applies to your layout before measuring.
Monthly Uptime Percentage dropped below the target
Google measures Downtime as a period of one or more consecutive minutes of unavailability, then totals it across the billing month. Isolated sub-minute errors generally don’t register.
The outage is Google’s responsibility
Downtime from your software, your network, or factors outside Google’s reasonable control is excluded from the Monthly Uptime Percentage calculation.
You request within 30 days of becoming eligible
GCP’s window is the tightest of the three majors. The clock starts when you become eligible — effectively when the outage occurs — so act fast.
How to claim your GCP credit
Credits aren’t automatic — you have 30 days to file. Follow these steps.
Locate the impacted service
Find which Google Cloud service (Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, GKE) dropped below its Monthly Uptime Percentage using Cloud Monitoring and the Service Health dashboard.
Pull supporting metrics
Capture Cloud Monitoring uptime checks, error logs, and the precise downtime intervals. Google requires the dates and times of each incident.
File a Financial Credit request
Submit the request to Google Cloud Support within 30 days of becoming eligible, including all supporting documentation of the downtime.
Credit applied to a future cycle
Financial Credits are issued as a percentage of the monthly bill for the affected service and applied to a future billing cycle.
Eligibility fine print
- Financial Credits must be requested within 30 days of becoming eligible.
- Credits are your sole and exclusive remedy for any SLA non-compliance.
- Downtime from factors outside Google’s reasonable control is excluded.
Estimate your GCP credit
Enter your spend and downtime to see what GCP owes you.
A 10% credit on your $8,000 monthly AWS bill, based on 99.40% uptime.
Estimate only, based on AWS’s flagship compute SLA. Credits are capped at the affected service’s monthly charge. The smallest billable credit here is $800.00. Verify against your provider’s current agreement.
Gather your GCP claim evidence
A complete evidence pack is the single biggest factor in getting a credit approved on the first pass. Tick each item off as you collect it, then export the list for your ticket.
Gather every item below before you file. Complete evidence is the single biggest factor in getting a credit approved on the first pass.
Draft your GCP claim email
Fill in your incident details and we’ll write a claim email in GCP’s own terms, with the credit math already worked out. Copy it, attach your evidence, and send.
Fill in your incident details and we’ll draft a claim email in AWS’s own terms — ready to paste into a AWS Support case (Account and billing → SLA credit).
Subject: SLA Service Credit request — Amazon EC2 / EBS (Region-level) downtime on [incident date] Hello AWS Support, I am writing on behalf of [Your company] to request an SLA Service Credit for downtime that affected Amazon EC2 / EBS (Region-level) on our account ([account / subscription ID]). Incident summary - Affected service: Amazon EC2 / EBS (Region-level) - Date of incident: [incident date] - Total downtime: 4 hours 20 minutes - Resulting Monthly Uptime Percentage: 99.398% Amazon Web Services commits to a 99.99% Monthly Uptime Percentage SLA for this service. Our measured uptime of 99.398% falls below that commitment, which under your published SLA entitles us to a 10% Service Credit against the monthly charges for the affected service. Based on our monthly spend of $8,000 on this service, the 10% Service Credit amounts to approximately $800. Supporting documentation (attached) - Timestamped downtime windows (UTC) - Monitoring metrics / uptime checks for the incident period - The relevant invoice line item for the affected service This claim is submitted within your 60-day claim window. Please confirm receipt and let me know if you require any additional evidence to process the Service Credit. Thank you, [Your name] [Your company]
Review before sending — figures are estimates based on AWS’s flagship compute SLA. Attach your evidence and verify against your current agreement.
GCP SLA credit FAQ
- What is GCP's uptime SLA?
- Google Cloud commits to 99.99% Monthly Uptime Percentage for Compute Engine (Instance / Region). Falling below that threshold makes you eligible for service credits on a sliding scale, up to 100% of your monthly bill for the affected service.
- How long do I have to claim a GCP SLA credit?
- You must file your claim within 30 days of the incident (or of becoming eligible). Miss the window and the credit is forfeited — GCP does not issue credits automatically.
- Are GCP SLA credits paid as cash?
- No. Credits are applied against a future monthly invoice for the affected service, not refunded as cash, and they are capped at that service's monthly charge.
- What evidence do I need to claim a credit?
- Provide the dates and times of each downtime window plus supporting monitoring data (error rates, failed requests, uptime checks). Detailed logs make approval far more likely.