Google Firebase Pricing for Dummies

How Much Does Google Firebase Cost?

Firebase is a platform for building web and mobile applications. It was originally developed by Firebase Inc., and purchased by Google in 2018.

Firebase has two main pricing plans. The Firebase pricing plans are:

• Spark Plan (Firebase free tier) is a basic plan offering 1 GB total storage, 20K writes/day, 50K reads/day, and 20K deleted/day

• Blaze Plan (paid) is a pay as you go plan charging $0.18/GB for database storage, $0.026/GB for application storage, and additional charges for database operations, data transfer, etc.

In this article, you will learn:

• How Much Does Google Firebase Cost?
• Firebase Always-Free Services
• Firebase Pricing for Paid Services
• Cloud Firestore Database
• Real-Time Databases
• Hosting
• Authentication
• Cloud Functions
• Firebase ML
• Test Lab
• Firebase: Estimating Your Costs

Firebase Always-Free Services

Firebase provides a variety of services that are not charged in both the free and paid plans:

• Application delivery—distribute the application to trusted testers.

• App indexing—enable Google and other search engines to index the app.

• A/B Testing—deploy different versions of the application for specific users.

• Analytics—reporting and prediction of app performance.

• In-app messaging—interact with users who are actively using the application.

• Cloud messaging—Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), also known as Google Cloud Messaging, can be used in iOS, Android, and web applications to send automatic messages and notifications.

• Performance monitoring—monitor the performance of Firebase apps.

• CrashLytics—helps you detect crashes occurring in your application and determine their cause.

• Dynamic links—can be used to redirect users from one platform to another.

• Remote configuration—customize some basic functions of the application remotely, for example changing color and hiding or showing text.

• Predictions—Firebase machine learning tools can help you better analyze whether a particular user has returned to your app.

Keep reading to know more about usage and billing for paid services.

Firebase Pricing for Paid Services

Let’s review remaining Firebase services, which are paid in the Blaze pricing plan, and may be offered for free up to a certain limit in the Spark plan.

Below are some Firebase pricing examples available under the Firebase price structure.

Cloud Firestore Database

Lest’s start with Firebase database plans. Cloud Firestore is Firebase’s new recommended database. It provides a total of 1 GiB of storage. In the Blaze plan there is a charge for storage space, and database operations are priced separately.

Realtime Databases

The Firebase real-time database provides free and unlimited read and write operations.

To understand the full scope of services offered on Google Cloud, learn about other Google Cloud Database services. Please read the article Should You Choose Realtime DB or Cloud Firestore to know more about Firebase databases.

Firebase Hosting Pricing

Google hosts your Firebase app free in the Spark plan, and in the Blaze plan, charges a modest fee per GB of application data stored and data transferred. Both plans provide free SSL and multiple sites per project. Here is a table with the Firebase cloud storage pricing:

To learn more about storage, please read the article Firebase Storage.

Authentication

Firebase provides 10,000 authentications a month, and beyond that, charges a different rate depending on your region.

Cloud Functions 

Google Cloud Functions, the Google Function as a Service product, is offered as part of the Firebase plans.

* Above this free allowance, GB-seconds and CPU-seconds are charged, consult the Google Cloud Service pricing page. Or learn more about Google Cloud costs for all services.

Firebase ML

The Google machine learning kit is available in Firebase for up to 1,000 images per project, and can be useful for a variety of image processing tasks. 

Test Lab

The Google Test Lab is available 5 times a day for real devices and 10 times a day for virtual devices. 

Firebase: Estimating Your Costs

Firebase provides the Usage tab in its console which shows the status of your payments and usage of various Firebase services:

• Storage tab—shows you the amount of data stored in the database, excluding data stored in other Firebase products.

• Connections tab—number of real-time connections like WebSockets.

• Load tab—graphically displays application loads, and shows data used over a certain period of time.

• Downloads tab—displays the volume of data downloaded from the database.

Conclusion

Firebase has two pricing levels. The first one incorporates a limited Free tier, and it’s an excellent option for development and small applications. The second tier works on a pay as you grow model, and it’s ideal for production applications. Hopefully this article helped you to know more about Firebase rates.