This document lists significant changes to the Google Cloud Well-Architected Framework.

February 13, 2026

• Well-Architected Framework AI and ML perspective: Performance optimization:Major update to expand the performance-optimization recommendations.

January 28, 2026

• Well-Architected Framework Sustainability pillar:Expanded the sustainability guidance in the Well-Architected Framework as afull-fledged pillar.

November 26, 2025

• AI and ML perspective: Security:Major update to expand the security recommendations in the AI and MLperspective.

August 7, 2025

• AI and ML perspective: Reliability:Major update to expand the reliability recommendations in the AI and MLperspective.

July 28, 2025

• Added theFinancial services industry (FSI) perspective.These documents describe principles and recommendations that are specificto FSI, aligned to each pillar of the Architecture Framework.

May 28, 2025

• AI and ML perspective: Cost optimization:Major update to expand the cost optimization recommendations in the AIand ML perspective.

April 28, 2025

• AI and ML perspective: Operational excellence:Major update to expand the operational excellence recommendations in the AIand ML perspective.

February 5, 2025

• Security, privacy, and compliance pillar:Major update to align the recommendations with core principles of security, privacy, and compliance.

December 30, 2024

• Reliability pillar:Major update to align the recommendations with core principles of reliability.

December 6, 2024

• Performance optimization pillar:Major update to align the recommendations with core principles of performanceoptimization.

October 31, 2024

• Operational excellence pillar:Major update to align the recommendations with core principles of operationalexcellence.

October 11, 2024

• Added theAI and ML perspective.These documents describe principles and recommendations that are specificto AI and ML, aligned to each pillar of the Architecture Framework.

September 25, 2024

• Cost optimization pillar:Major update to align the recommendations with core principles of costoptimization.

August 27, 2024

• The System Design category of the Architecture Framework has beenremoved. The guidance in this category is available in other Google Clouddocumentation.

June 4, 2024

• Cost optimization category:
  • Added information aboutmonitoring the cost of Dataflow resources.
  • Add recommendations foroptimizing cost by using the at-least-once streaming mode and the dynamic thread scalingfeature.

May 31, 2024

• Cost optimization category:
  • Added information about theFinOps hub.

May 30, 2024

• System design category:
  • Added a new design principle,Design for change.

May 23, 2024

• Cost optimization category:
  • Added guidance inOptimize cost: Compute, containers, and serverless about reducing cost by suspending idle Compute Engine VMs .

May 16, 2024

• System design category:
  • Added information about the Batch service inChoose and manage compute.

May 9, 2024

• Cost optimization category:
  • Updated guidance about Dataflow Shuffle inOptimize cost: Databases and smart analytics.

April 22, 2024

• Cost optimization category:
  • Added a recommendation about considering storage cost when configuring the log-retention period inOptimize cost: Cloud operations.

March 29, 2024

• Reliability category:
  • Reorganized the guidance related toSLOs andSLIs to improve usability and alignment with SRE guidance.

January 4, 2024

• Performance optimization category:
  • Updated the guidance forNetwork Service Tiers.

November 28, 2023

• Reliability category:
  • Reorganized the content to improve readability and consistency:
  • Define SLOs:Moved "Terminology" section to new page:Terminology
  • Adopt SLOs:Moved "SLOs and Alerts" section to new page:SLOs and Alerts

November 9, 2023

• System design category:
  • Added guidance to help cloud architects tochoose deployment archetypes for workloads in Google Cloud.