Google Cloud TPU
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
Free Trial
Free version unavailable
- Information technology and software
- Healthcare and life sciences
- Media and communications
What is Google Cloud TPU
High-throughput ML acceleration
Managed scaling and orchestration
Strong TensorFlow and JAX support
Framework and portability constraints
Operational and cost complexity
Ecosystem dependence on Google Cloud
Plan & Pricing
Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (per chip-hour). Pricing varies by TPU version, deployment option (On Demand, Spot/Preemptible, and multi-year Commitment/Committed Use Discounts), and region.
Free tier/trial: New Google Cloud customers receive $300 in free credits (Free Trial) usable across Google Cloud products; researchers can apply to the TPU Research Cloud (TRC) for free TPU access (subject to program acceptance).
Example costs (official site examples, per chip-hour, USD):
-
On Demand (example regions):
- TPU v5p – $4.20 per chip-hour (us-east5 / us-east1).
- TPU v5e – $1.20 per chip-hour (us-central1).
- Trillium – $2.70 per chip-hour (us-east1).
- TPU v4 pod – $3.22 per chip-hour (us-central2).
- TPU v3 device – $2.20 per chip-hour (europe-west4).
- TPU v2 device – $1.305 per chip-hour (asia-east1).
-
Spot / Preemptible (example current spot prices from official Spot pricing page):
- Trillium (spot) – $0.748824 per hour.
- TPU v5p (spot) – $1.2138 per hour.
- TPU v5e (spot) – $0.244926 per hour.
- (Spot prices are dynamic and can change; see official Spot pricing page for current values.)
-
Commitment (Committed Use / DWS examples, per chip-hour):
- TPU v5p – 1-year: $2.94; 3-year: $1.89 (example region entries on official pricing page).
- TPU v5e – 1-year: $0.84; 3-year: $0.54.
- Trillium – 1-year: $1.89; 3-year: $1.22.
Discount options: 1-year and 3-year Committed Use Discounts (monthly billing based on reserved quota), DWS (flex-start and calendar modes) prices listed on the official pricing page, and Spot/Preemptible discounted hourly options. Pricing also varies by region and by whether pricing is shown per chip-hour or displayed in VM-hours in the console (a VM can include multiple chips).
Billing & units / notes: Charges accrue while a TPU node is in the READY state; prices on the official pricing page are shown per chip-hour (billing in Console shows VM-hours). For cost estimation use the Google Cloud pricing calculator with “Cloud TPU”.
Source: Official Google Cloud TPU pricing and Spot pricing pages; Google Cloud Free Trial documentation (see citations in assistant response).
Seller details
