Spanner free trial instances overview

Note: A Spanner free trial instance supportsStandard edition features, and Enterprise editionfeatures, such asKNN,ANN vector distance functions,full-text search, andSpanner Graph.For more information, see theSpanner editions overview.

This page provides an overview of Spanner free trial instances.

A Spanner free trial instance lets you learn and exploreSpanner features and capabilities at no cost for up to 90 days.Using a Spanner free trial instance, you can createGoogleSQL or PostgreSQL-dialect databases and store up to10 GB of data to test out key Spanner features, and learn keySpanner concepts.

You cancreate a Spanner free trial instanceusing the Google Cloud console or Google Cloud CLI.

Explore sample databases and applications

When you create the free trial instance using the Google Cloud console,Spanner creates and preloads a sample database for an ecommercestore in the free trial instance. The sample database schema defines entitiesfor users, products, orders, shopping carts, order items, addresses, andpayments. Spanner inserts sample data into the ecommercedatabase. You can view saved queries on the Spanner Studio page for thesample database that help showcase the following Spannercapabilities:

  • The relational model
  • Full-text search
  • Vector search for product similarity
  • Graph relationships between entities such as users, orders, and products

You can also create new databases, define schema, and load data in thefree trial instance. To learn more, seeCreate a Spanner free trial instance and sample application.

In addition to the ecommerce use case database, Spanner offers anopen sourcesample applicationto help you get started with the Spanner free trial instance. Thesample application includes a backend gRPC service backed by a Spannerdatabase and a workload generator that drives traffic to the service.

Cost and eligibility

A Spanner free trial instance is available at no cost to bothexisting and new Google Cloud customers. If you're a new Google Cloud customer,you might also be eligible for theGoogle Cloud 90-day, $300 Free Trialthat offers $300 in free Cloud Billing credits to pay for any Google Cloudresources. The Spanner free trial instance is inaddition to the $300 Free Trial credits offered by the Google Cloud Free Trial,and you don't need to use any free Cloud Billing credits to create afree trial instance.

For more information about the Spanner free trial instance, seethe following table:

Eligibility

You're eligible to create a Spanner free trial instance if you have a Cloud Billing account that's active, and Cloud Billing is enabled for your project.

Spanner editions

A free trial instance supports Standard edition features, and Enterprise edition features, such asKNN,ANN vector distance functions,full-text search, andSpanner Graph. To experience other Enterprise edition features and more of Spanner's performance at scale, upgrade to a paid instance. Your free trial instance defaults to the Enterprise edition when you upgrade it to a paid instance. If you don't want to use the Enterprise edition, upgrade your free trial instance to the paid Enterprise edition first. Then, you can upgrade your instance to the Enterprise Plus edition, or contact support to downgrade to the Standard edition. For more information, see theSpanner editions overview.

Initiation

The Spanner free trial instance period starts automatically when you create a free trial instance.

If you already have an active Cloud Billing account, you can create a Spanner free trial instance using the Google Cloud console or gcloud CLI.

If you are a new Google Cloud customer, sign in to the Google Cloud console with your Google Account and set up a Cloud Billing account with your credit card or other payment method first before creating a Spanner free trial instance. Google uses this payment information to verify your identity. We don't charge your Spanner instance unless you explicitly upgrade your Cloud Billing account to a paid account, and you upgrade your Spanner free trial instance to a paid instance.

Duration

Your free trial instance ends when one of the following occurs:

  • 90 days have elapsed since you created your free trial instance.
  • You upgrade your free trial instance to a paid Enterprise edition instance.
  • You delete the free trial instance.

If you don't upgrade your free trial instance after the 90-day trial period, the instance stops serving requests and enters a 30-day grace period. During the grace period, the data in the instance is retained and you can still upgrade your free trial instance. If you don't upgrade your free trial instance by the end of the 30-day grace period, the instance, along with the data in it, is deleted. Note that even if you enable database deletion protection on a database in your free trial instance, your free trial instance will still be deleted after the 30-day grace period unless you upgrade it to a paid Enterprise edition instance.

Note: An active Cloud Billing account is required to keep using your Spanner free trial instance. If your Google Cloud Free Trial ends before the end of your Spanner free trial instance, then you need to upgrade your Cloud Billing account to a paid account to continue using your Spanner free trial instance.

Service level agreement (SLA)

SLAs don't apply to free trial instances. The free trial instance is intended to help you learn and explore Spanner. We don't recommend running production applications in your free trial instance.

Available instance configurations

You can create a free trial instance in any of the Spannerregional instance configurations.

You can't create a free trial instance in adual-region or multi-region instance configuration. To create instances in a dual-region or multi-region configuration, use a paid Enterprise Plus edition instance.

Limitations

The free trial instance is subject to the following limitations:

The free trial instance is meant for evaluation purposes. It is not meant forthe following use cases:

  • Production related activities
  • Performance evaluation and load testing of Spanner
  • Ongoing testing and development

Performance

Note: These performance numbers are estimates only. Spannerperformance is highly dependent on workload, schema design, and datasetcharacteristics.

A Spanner free trial instance can provide around 500 queriesper second (QPS) of reads or 100 QPS of writes (writing single rows at 1 KB ofdata per row) when you follow these best practices:

You can monitor and optimize the performance of your free trial instance withthe help of:

For better performance, upgrade your free trial instance to a paid instanceand scale up thecompute capacity of yourinstance.

Upgrade from free trial instances

You can upgrade your Spanner free trial instance to a paidEnterprise edition instance anytime during the 90-dayfree trial instance period without any downtime. You aren't charged unless youexplicitly upgrade your free trial instance to a paid instance.

Upgrading your Spanner free trial instance has thefollowing benefits:

  • Keeps your Spanner free trial instance runninguninterrupted beyond the 90-day free trial period.
  • Gives you access to Spanner features that aren't available inthe free trial instance, such as backups and managed autoscaler. You canalso upgrade to the Enterprise Plus edition for additionalfeatures, such as geo-partitioning and multi-regional configurations with99.999% availability.
  • Lets you increase the compute capacity of your instance and obtain higherperformance (QPS, throughput) and storage capacity (greater than 10 GB).

As an option, you can opt in to automatically upgrade your free trial instanceto a paid Enterprise edition instance after 90 days. For moreinformation, seeUpgrade free trial instance.

If don't want to use the Enterprise edition, upgrade yourfree trial instance to the paid Enterprise edition first. Then, youcan upgrade your instance to the Enterprise Plus edition, or contactsupport to downgrade to the Standard edition. For more information,see theSpanner editions overview.

Troubleshooting FAQs

Why can't I create a free trial instance in my project?
You can create one free trial instance per project. If you've alreadycreated a free trial instance in your project, you can't createanother one.
Why can't I create a free trial instance in instance configuration X?
Spanner free trial instances are available in allregional configurations. They aren't available indual-region ormulti-region configurations.
How can I create more than five databases in a free trial instance?
If you want to create more than five databases, upgrade yourfree trial instance to a paid instance.
My free trial instance has been disabled. How can I re-enable it?
If you've completed the Spanner 90-day free trial period, thefree trial instance is disabled and enters a 30-day grace period. You canstart using your instance again byupgrading your free trial instance toa paid instance during the90-day trial period or the 30-day grace period.

Support

To get support for your Spanner instance, you can:

  • Get a Google support package
  • Ask a question on Stack Overflow
  • Join online help communities
  • File a bug or feature request

For more information, seeGet support.

What's next

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Last updated 2026-02-19 UTC.