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Managed authoritative and private DNS · by Google Cloud

Google Cloud DNS

Google Cloud's managed DNS at about $0.20 per zone and $0.40 per million queries, with public, private and forwarding zones plus health-checked routing policies.

Visit cloud.google.com ↗ Alternatives Paid EU region
Google Cloud DNS homepage
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Overview

Cloud DNS is Google Cloud's managed DNS. It serves public zones for your domains, private zones visible only inside your VPC networks, and forwarding zones for hybrid setups. Everything is managed through the Google Cloud console, gcloud, Terraform or the API with Google Cloud IAM.

There is no free tier. Each zone costs about $0.20 a month for the first 25, prorated hourly, and queries cost $0.40 per million for the first billion. Google's own example puts a site with 5 zones and 10 million queries at $5 a month. Routing-policy queries (weighted round robin, geolocation, failover) cost $0.70 per million, and health checks are billed separately.

Registration is handled by the companion Cloud Domains service, which can register domains and set up Cloud DNS zones automatically. New Google Cloud customers get $300 in credits that can be spent on Cloud DNS.

DNS Armor, a threat-detection add-on for VPC workloads, is billed per workload unit and writes findings to Cloud Logging, which has its own storage charges.

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Pricing and plans

Plan Price What you get
Managed zones ~$0.20/zone/mo First 25 zones ($0.000273973/hr); ~$0.10 up to 10,000; ~$0.03 above
Regular queries $0.40 per million First 1 billion a month; $0.20 per million above
Routing policy queries $0.70 per million $0.35 per million above 1 billion
Health checks From $0.50/mo Internal fast checks $0.50/mo; external checks billed hourly

Zones are billed hourly and prorated; Google's example prices 5 zones at $1.00 a month. All zone types (public, private, forwarding) are aggregated for pricing. Cloud DNS usage has no data transfer charges. DNS Armor threat detection is billed separately per workload unit. New customers get $300 in Google Cloud credits.

Source: cloud.google.com/dns/pricing · prices as published, excluding tax.

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What it does

Public zones
Authoritative DNS served from Google's anycast name servers; Google advertises 100% availability.
Private zones
Zones visible only to chosen VPC networks.
Forwarding zones
Forward queries to on-premises or other DNS servers for hybrid networks.
Routing policies
Weighted round robin, geolocation and failover answers, optionally with health checks.
Health checks
External fast and premium checks with 5-second default probes, plus internal load balancer checks.
Labels
Label zones to see per-label billing breakdowns.
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Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Low, published per-zone and per-query prices, prorated hourly.
  • Public, private and forwarding zones in one service.
  • No data transfer charges for DNS.
  • Fits Google Cloud IAM, Terraform and billing.

Limitations

  • Google states there is no free tier for Cloud DNS.
  • Routing-policy queries cost $0.70 per million, nearly double regular queries.
  • Health checks for routing policies are billed separately.
  • Domain registration is a separate product (Cloud Domains).
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Who it suits

Good for

  • Projects hosted on Google Cloud
  • Hybrid networks needing private and forwarding zones
  • Teams managing DNS with Terraform

Look elsewhere if

  • Hobby projects wanting free DNS
  • Teams outside Google Cloud who want a simple DNS panel
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Alternatives to Google Cloud DNS

Tool From Free option Stages
Amazon Route 53 Managed DNS and traffic routing
$0.5/mo Paid
DNSimple DNS hosting and domain management
$0.5/mo Paid
Azure DNS Managed public and private DNS
$0.5/mo Paid
INWX Domain registrar
$15.72/yr Paid
Amazon CloudFront CDN with bundled WAF and DNS plans
$15/mo Free tier
Cloudflare CDN, DNS, WAF and DDoS protection
$20/mo Free tier

All CDN, DNS and edge security →

§7

Questions

Is Google Cloud DNS free?

No. Google states there is no free tier; zones cost about $0.20 a month each plus $0.40 per million queries.

How much does Cloud DNS cost for a small website?

Google's example of 5 zones and 10 million queries a month comes to $5.

Does Google Cloud DNS support private zones?

Yes. Private zones are visible only to the VPC networks you choose and are priced like public zones.

Does Cloud DNS support failover routing?

Yes. Routing policies support failover, weighted and geolocation answers with health checks.

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