What are the key differences between Filestore tiers?

Basic HDD offers the lowest cost per GB but limited IOPS (600 read, 1000 write). Basic SSD provides higher performance (60K read IOPS) at moderate cost. Zonal tier offers flexible capacity scaling in 256 GiB increments with high performance. Regional tier adds synchronous replication across zones. Enterprise tier provides the highest availability with regional replication, snapshots, and up to 120K IOPS. Choose based on your performance, availability, and budget requirements.

How is Filestore priced differently from Cloud Storage?

Filestore charges per GiB of provisioned capacity per month regardless of how much data you store — you pay for the full provisioned size. Cloud Storage charges per GiB of data actually stored plus per-operation fees. Filestore is cost-effective when you need consistent NFS performance and will utilize most of the provisioned capacity; Cloud Storage is cheaper for variable or object-based workloads.

GCP Filestore Cost Estimator

StorageGCP

Estimate Filestore instance costs by tier, capacity, performance limits, and backup configuration.

Last verified: May 2026

Filestore Configuration

Service Tier

Capacity (TB)

If below tier minimum, billing uses the minimum capacity.

Raw Output

Output will appear here...

See It in Action

Your team is building a media rendering pipeline needing 5 TB of NFS shared storage with sustained high IOPS. The estimator compares: Filestore Enterprise 5 TB = $1,800/month (best for high IOPS + regional replication), Basic SSD 5 TB = $1,000/month (similar IOPS but no regional replication), Zonal 5 TB = $700/month (sufficient IOPS, no replication). Choice: Zonal tier — the workload tolerates zone-level outages (it's batch processing, retry-safe), so the regional replication premium isn't justified. Save $1,100/month vs naive Enterprise selection.

What This Tool Does

Filestore provides fully managed NFS file servers for GKE workloads, Compute Engine instances, and on-premises clients that need shared POSIX-compliant storage. Costs depend on the service tier (Basic HDD, Basic SSD, Zonal, Regional, Enterprise), provisioned capacity, and region. Higher tiers offer better IOPS and throughput but at increased cost. This estimator calculates monthly expenses based on your tier selection, capacity requirements, and region, helping you compare tiers and right-size your Filestore instances.

Technical Details

The estimator computes Filestore monthly cost across tiers: Basic HDD/SSD (per-GiB-month rate by tier), Zonal (per-GiB rate × provisioned capacity in 256 GiB increments), Regional (Zonal rate × ~2x for cross-zone replication), Enterprise (highest rate including regional replication + snapshots). Output presents per-tier cost comparison plus the per-IOPS effective cost (rate ÷ IOPS at that capacity) for performance-cost analysis.

Common Use Cases

1Comparing monthly costs between Basic SSD and Enterprise tiers for a media rendering pipeline that needs high IOPS shared storage
2Estimating storage costs for a GKE cluster that needs ReadWriteMany persistent volumes backed by Filestore
3Budgeting for Filestore Enterprise instances that provide regional availability for mission-critical NFS workloads
4Evaluating whether Filestore Zonal or Cloud Storage FUSE is more cost-effective for batch processing workloads

Common Questions

What are the key differences between Filestore tiers?: Basic HDD offers the lowest cost per GB but limited IOPS (600 read, 1000 write). Basic SSD provides higher performance (60K read IOPS) at moderate cost. Zonal tier offers flexible capacity scaling in 256 GiB increments with high performance. Regional tier adds synchronous replication across zones. Enterprise tier provides the highest availability with regional replication, snapshots, and up to 120K IOPS. Choose based on your performance, availability, and budget requirements.
How is Filestore priced differently from Cloud Storage?: Filestore charges per GiB of provisioned capacity per month regardless of how much data you store — you pay for the full provisioned size. Cloud Storage charges per GiB of data actually stored plus per-operation fees. Filestore is cost-effective when you need consistent NFS performance and will utilize most of the provisioned capacity; Cloud Storage is cheaper for variable or object-based workloads.

Expert Tips

TIP

Filestore charges per provisioned GiB regardless of actual data — pay for the full size you provision. Cloud Storage FUSE charges per GB stored. For workloads that fluctuate widely in size (build artifacts, ephemeral data), GCS FUSE can be dramatically cheaper than over-provisioning Filestore.

TIP

Enterprise tier provides regional replication AND snapshots — essential for stateful production workloads. The cost premium over Zonal is ~3x but failover behavior during zone events is automatic. For workloads where downtime cost is significant, Enterprise is justified.

TIP

Filestore's minimum size is 1 TiB for Basic tiers and 256 GiB for Zonal. For workloads needing genuinely small shared storage, alternatives like NFS via Cloud Storage FUSE or a self-managed NFS VM may be cheaper than Filestore's minimum sizes.

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