How to claim an SLA credit from Google Cloud
Google Cloud gives you just 30 days to claim an SLA credit — the shortest window of the major clouds. Here's the credit schedule for Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery and more, and how to file before it closes.
Google Cloud's SLA credits are real and tiered — but the clock is short. Where Azure allows 60 days from the incident and AWS runs to the end of the second billing cycle after it, most Google Cloud services give you 30 — and the window runs from the moment you become eligible for the credit, not from month-end. Compute Engine is the exception, at 60. Here's what Google Cloud pays and how to claim it in time.
The short answer
When a Google Cloud service misses its monthly SLA, Google Cloud pays a financial credit worth 10% to 50% of that service's monthly charges, depending on how far uptime fell below target. You file it through a Google Cloud Support case (Billing → SLA credit) within 30 days of the incident — the shortest deadline among the major clouds. Google applies the approved credit to a future invoice after it verifies the shortfall.
What Google Cloud commits to
| Service | Monthly uptime commitment |
|---|---|
| Compute Engine (Multi-Zone) | 99.99% |
| BigQuery | 99.99% |
| Cloud Storage (Multi-Region) | 99.95% |
| Cloud SQL (HA) | 99.95% |
What Google Cloud pays
Every GCP service above uses the same three-tier credit schedule, applied to the affected service's monthly charges:
| Measured monthly uptime | Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.0% – under the target | 10% |
| 95.0% – under 99.0% | 25% |
| below 95.0% | 50% |
Note the ceiling: Google Cloud caps its severe-outage credit at 50%, where AWS and Azure go to 100%. Model your figure on the Google Cloud credit calculator with your monthly spend and observed uptime.
The evidence Google expects
- Your Project ID
- The affected resources (instance names, bucket names, dataset or instance IDs)
- The incident start and end times
Corroborate the outage with the incident reference from the Google Cloud status page.
How to claim a Google Cloud SLA credit
- Confirm the outage and incident reference on the Google Cloud status dashboard, capturing the exact start and end times for your region or zone.
- Identify the affected service, calculate its monthly uptime, and match the shortfall to the 10% / 25% / 50% tier.
- Sign in to the affected Google Cloud project and open Support → Cases → Create case (or contact your account team if you're on a sales-assisted plan).
- Set the category to Billing → SLA credit, and describe the breach: project ID, affected resources, incident reference, measured uptime, and the credit percentage claimed.
- Submit within 30 days of the incident — Google applies the verified credit to a future invoice.
Watch the exclusions
GCP's SLAs exclude scheduled maintenance windows and specifically carve out lower-availability configurations: Preemptible VMs, single-region Cloud Storage buckets, and non-HA Cloud SQL instances don't carry the headline commitments above. Confirm your resource qualifies before filing.
Frequently asked questions
What SLA credit does Google Cloud pay when it goes down?
A financial credit worth 10% to 50% of the affected service's monthly charges — 10% for a small shortfall below target, 25% below 99.0%, and 50% below 95.0%. It's applied to a future invoice, not refunded as cash.
How long do I have to claim a Google Cloud SLA credit?
30 days from the incident — the shortest window of the major cloud providers (Azure allows 60 days, also from the incident; AWS does not count in days at all, running instead to the end of the second billing cycle after the outage). Because it runs from the outage date, a GCP credit is easy to forfeit simply by noticing too late.
How do I file a Google Cloud SLA credit claim?
Open a support case from the affected project under Billing → SLA credit, citing the project ID, affected resources, incident reference, and measured uptime. The Google Cloud SLA guide lists the per-service tiers and a calculator.
Why is Google Cloud's maximum credit lower than AWS?
GCP caps its most severe tier at 50% of the affected service's monthly charges, whereas AWS and Azure can reach 100%. The entry tier (10%) is the same across all three.
Do Preemptible VMs qualify for an SLA credit?
No. Preemptible (and Spot) VMs are excluded from the Compute Engine SLA, as are single-region Cloud Storage buckets and non-HA Cloud SQL instances. Only the qualifying configurations carry the committed uptime.
Methodology & caveats
The commitments and credit tiers above are transcribed from Google Cloud's published service SLAs into Ontracko's profiles; verify the exact clause on the service's SLA page before filing. Live GCP incident history is on its status page.
*Ontracko monitors Google Cloud's public status feed, detects SLA breaches, and assembles the claim before the 30-day window closes. Free — 8% only on recovered credits. See GCP live status or the GCP SLA calculator.*
Related reading
Does Cohere have an SLA? The 99.5% uptime objective, its 10/20/30% credits, and the 30-day clock that starts before the month ends
Cohere's published Service Level Objective for its API SaaS service sets 99.5% monthly uptime per Covered Service and pays 10%, 20% or 30% of that service's monthly invoice when it is missed — claimed by email within 30 days of becoming entitled, not 30 days after the month closes. Here is the whole tariff, the downtime it allows, the two gaps in the table, and how to claim.
Does Pinecone have an SLA? The 99.95% uptime standard, its 10/25/50% credits, and the 60-minute ticket rule that decides every claim
Pinecone's Database Service Level Addendum sets a 99.95% monthly availability standard and pays 10%, 25% or 50% of the month's database fees when it is missed — but only on a qualifying Enterprise Advance Commitment, and only if you opened a support ticket within 60 minutes of the outage starting. Here is the whole tariff, the downtime it allows, and how to claim.
Does Vercel have an SLA? The 99.99% Enterprise uptime commitment, its credit tiers, its two gaps, and how to claim
Vercel's Enterprise SLA targets 99.99% monthly uptime for the parts of the platform that serve your content. Misses pay 10%, 25% or 50% of the month's fee, capped at 50%, claimed in writing with log files within 30 days of becoming eligible. Hobby and Pro plans get no uptime SLA — and two narrow bands of downtime pay nothing at all.
How to calculate your SLA credit: the formula, worked examples, and the mistakes that zero it out
An SLA credit is a percentage of the monthly fee for the affected service — not your whole bill — set by how far uptime fell below the commitment. Here's the three-step formula, a downtime cheat sheet, two worked examples (tiered and flat), and why a real breach sometimes still calculates to zero.
Or browse the SLA glossary and the reliability rankings.
Stop leaving SLA credits on the table
Ontracko monitors your vendors, catches every SLA breach, and drafts the claim. Free — 8% only on recovered credits.
Start monitoring free