Can I host multiple websites on free tier pricing structure?

[Bruno Vincent]

I'm quite confused about the free tier pricing structure, I got on chat with Google, and they say I won't be able to find out until free free $300 of credits is over...

So I see credits and discounts, but not sure what this will cost me after the free credits are over...

I've seen youtube videos where they say you can host for pennies a month, but from what i can see, it's like $5 a month per website, even if the site is empty with no traffic and just sitting there...

I have multiple computer engine, but they are all west1 instances, I thought that was supposed to be free?

Or do I only get 1 instance for free? 

Or can I have a VM and host multple sites on that  one?

The video that talks about this is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIJdypOqlL4

He claims this costs pennies, is he full of it or is this true?

[Md Mustafizur Rahman Sonchoy]

Hi,

I found [the document](https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/gcp-free-tier) explaining the free tier. Especially you might be interested in eligibility conditions:

-You have never been a paying customer of Google Cloud.

-You have never been a paying customer of Google Maps Platform or Firebase. If you have been a paying -customer of either of these services, contact support.

-You have not previously signed up for the free trial.

-You have enabled billing for your account through the Google Cloud Console.

-You aren't setting up a business account with a term sheet by working with a sales representative.

And the following exceptions:

-You can't have more than 8 cores (or virtual CPUs) running at the same time.

-You can't add GPUs to your VM instances.

-You can't request a quota increase. For an overview of Compute Engine quotas, see Resource quotas.

-You can't create VM instances that are based on Windows Server images.

[Fady (Google Cloud Platform)]

Hello Bruno, 

I have only watched the intro in the youtube video, and I believe he is almost correct. For simplicity reasons, you can assume you have one f1 micro VM instance that you could use in a project as "always free" as long as you do not use up beyond the limits such as the 1GB Egress. Basically, if you have one instance, it would be free. If you use other paid services such as static IPs, or you exceeded the limits you could be charged. Here is a document about network charges in general.

However, this is not how it works. To be more accurate, "your Always Free f1-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance. Each month, eligible use of all of your f1-micro instances is free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month." [1] 

Example: June has 30 days x 24 hours = 720 hours. Hence, you have 720 hours that are free this month that can be used against all of the f1 micro instances. If you go beyond these hours (multiple instances), you would be charged. As you are using free trial, the remaining hours would be charged against the free trial credits. 

Theoretically, I can have 4 instances that runs 6 hours a day for the month, and I should not encounter charges. But if I require the VM to run 24 hours/day/month, I have no choice but to deploy one VM only (if I am planning not to encounter charges)

This is explained in this document with the conditions for eligibility. 

I hope the above helps.