Google Cloud Monitoring
Google Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, availability and health of applications and infrastructure.
What Google Cloud Monitoring is
Google Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, availability and health of applications and infrastructure. It collects metrics automatically for Google Cloud services and supports hybrid and multicloud environments. Teams can combine metrics, uptime monitoring, dashboards and alerts, including custom dashboards and alert policies with multiple conditions. Service-level objectives can be inferred automatically or defined by users, with alerts when they are violated. Script-based synthetic monitors test web applications and APIs and can report faulty behavior. Alerts can be sent through email, Slack, PagerDuty, Pub/Sub, SMS, webhooks or the Cloud Mobile App. Managed Service for Prometheus handles managed or self-deployed metric collection for Kubernetes workloads. On supported Linux and Windows virtual machines, the Ops Agent collects logs and metrics and integrates with third-party applications; it is not supported on Amazon EC2 or on-premises machines. Access is controlled through Google Cloud IAM roles and permissions. The cloud service has API, Linux, web and Windows platform listings, and its API v3 supports programmatic access to features such as alerting policies, dashboards and metrics scopes.
Good
- Automatic metric collection for Google Cloud services
- Custom dashboards and multi-condition alerting
- Synthetic tests cover web applications and APIs
- Alerts reach multiple listed channels
- API v3 provides programmatic access
Watch out
- Ops Agent excludes Amazon EC2 instances
- Ops Agent excludes on-premises machines
- Charges can depend on several usage meters
- Free monthly allotments apply only to several meters
Who it suits
It suits teams monitoring applications and infrastructure across Google Cloud, hybrid or multicloud environments. It may also fit Kubernetes teams and operators of supported Linux or Windows virtual machines.
Verdict
Google Cloud Monitoring brings metrics, uptime checks, dashboards and alerting into one cloud service. Review its usage-based charging meters and the Ops Agent’s environment limits when deciding whether it fits your setup.
Plans and prices
From Google Cloud Monitoring's own pricing page, checked 8 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Managed Service for Prometheus metrics | $0.06 a month | No free allotment listed · $0.06/million samples for first 0–50 billion; rates decrease by volume tier |
| Pay-as-you-go Cloud Monitoring | $0.26 a month | All non-chargeable Google Cloud metrics · First 150 MiB per billing account for metrics charged by bytes ingested · Usage-based; $0.2580/MiB for first 150–100,000 MiB, then $0.1510/MiB for next 100,000–250,000 MiB and $0.0610/MiB above 250,000 MiB |
| Uptime check executions | $0.30 a month | 1 million executions per Google Cloud project included · $0.30/1,000 executions |
| Monitoring API read calls | $0.50 a month | First 1 million time series returned per billing account included · $0.50/million time series returned; write API calls have no charge |
| Synthetic monitor executions | $1.20 a month | 100 executions per billing account included · $1.20/1,000 executions |
The facts
Each one read from Google Cloud Monitoring's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- API
- Cloud Monitoring API v3 provides programmatic access to features including alerting policies, custom dashboards, and metrics scopes.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Compliance
- Google Cloud states that its services are independently audited for ISO/IEC 27001, and Cloud Monitoring is listed among covered software services.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Dashboards and alerts
- The service combines metrics, uptime monitoring, dashboards, and alerts, and supports custom dashboards and multi-condition alerting policies.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Hybrid and multicloud
- It provides automatic metric collection dashboards for Google Cloud services and supports hybrid and multicloud environments.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- Monitoring alerts can be sent through email, Slack, PagerDuty, Pub/Sub, SMS, webhooks, and the Cloud Mobile App.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Kubernetes and Prometheus
- Managed Service for Prometheus supports managed and self-deployed metric collection for Kubernetes workloads.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, availability, and health of applications and infrastructure.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Security and access
- Access to Cloud Monitoring is controlled through Google Cloud IAM roles and permissions.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Supported environments
- The Ops Agent is not supported on Amazon EC2 instances or on-premises machines.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Synthetic monitoring
- Synthetic monitors run automated script-based tests to track web application and API performance and can alert on faulty behavior.checked 8 Oct 2026
- Usage limits and charges
- Monitoring charges can depend on ingested data, returned time series, uptime-check executions, and synthetic-monitor executions; free monthly allotments apply to several meters.checked 8 Oct 2026
- VM agents
- The Ops Agent collects logs and metrics on supported Linux and Windows virtual machines and includes integrations for third-party applications.checked 8 Oct 2026
The company
- Headquarters
- Mountain View, California, United Stateschecked 28 Sep 2026
Where it runs
- SLOs
- Users can automatically infer or custom define service-level objectives and receive alerts when violations occur.checked 8 Oct 2026
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