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 AWS and Azure give you 60 days, GCP gives you 30, and the window runs from the incident. Here's what you're owed and how to claim it in time.
The short answer
When a Google Cloud service misses its monthly SLA, you're owed 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 you're owed
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 are you owed when Google Cloud 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 (AWS and Azure allow 60). 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
Which SaaS vendors actually pay SLA credits?
Not every vendor with an SLA pays out easily. Here's a side-by-side of the uptime commitments, credit percentages, and claim deadlines for the major cloud and SaaS vendors that owe credits when they go down.
What is an SLA credit, and how do you claim it?
A plain-English definition of SLA credits: what they are, when a vendor owes you one, how much you can claim, and the step-by-step process to get the money back.
SLA credit vs service credit: what's the difference?
SLA credit and service credit are often used interchangeably — but the wording in your contract matters. Here's what each term means and what you're actually owed after an outage.
How to claim an SLA credit from Cloudflare
Cloudflare's Business plan commits to 100% uptime and pays a formula-based credit when it misses. Here's how the 25x outage-ratio credit works, who qualifies, and how to file within 30 days.
Or browse the SLA glossary and the reliability rankings.
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