Cloud SQL Cost Control: Stop, Resize and Commit

What a Cloud SQL instance bills for

Google’s Cloud SQL pricing for MySQL and PostgreSQL is made of CPU and memory, storage and networking, and instance charges, with separate, higher rates for high-availability vCPUs and memory. The CPU and memory lines are the ones that run by the hour whether or not anyone connects.

Stopping is real, and partial

Cloud SQL supports a genuine stop. Setting the instance’s activation policy to NEVER (in the console, gcloud sql instances patch --activation-policy=NEVER, or the API) stops it; ALWAYS runs it again. Google’s start and stop page is precise about the bill: once stopped, the instance compute charges end, but charges for storage and IP addresses continue to apply. A schedule therefore removes the CPU and memory hours for the stopped window and nothing else.

What ZopNight does for Cloud SQL

Cloud SQL is on ZopNight’s start/stop list. A schedule is a set of cron expressions in your IANA timezone, attached to one instance or to a resource group. Inside a group, start runs in tiers (storage, then databases, then compute, then apps) and stop runs in reverse, with per-resource delays you can set, so a database can be given a head start before the services that use it. An override keeps an instance running through a late migration and expires on its own. Scheduled execution needs a read + write account; a read-only connection still gets discovery and recommendations.

The GCP recommendation catalog then covers the rest of the instance’s life:

• Idle GCP Cloud SQL Instance reads connection counts over 30 days and, when the heatmap shows a real off-hours window, prices a recurring stop/start schedule from the measured idle fraction.
• GCP Cloud SQL Right-sizing proposes a smaller machine shape from observed utilization.
• GCP Cloud SQL Committed Use Discount Opportunity flags steady instances where a commitment beats on-demand.
• GCP Cloud SQL Excessive Backup Retention for Dev/Test catches backups kept longer than a test database needs.
• Posture checks such as GCP Cloud SQL Instance Has Public IP Enabled, Does Not Require SSL, Automated Backup Disabled and Cloud SQL Production Instance Without HA.

One boundary is deliberate: ZopNight’s pause remediation template never modifies customer databases, and Cloud SQL is on its explicit exclusion list. Tier changes stay with your DBA; ZopNight recommends them.

Fact sheet: Cloud SQL. Schedule behaviour: scheduling Cloud SQL. All GCP findings: GCP recommendations.