Google Cloud Spanner database pricing when idle

Question

After reading the pricing of the new google relational database Spanner, it states that the cost is based on storage and use. They charge $0.9 by hour per node. The question is: if I create the database for development, and only use it 6 hours a day, 100 hours a Month as maximum... Do I have to pay only for the hours with active use (receiving queries) or for the whole month? The charge is similar to App Engine instances?

In the first case, there is no problem spending US$90 for testing this new database, but if they charge for the whole month (using it or not)... the cost rise to US$670/month...

Anyone has been using this database and can share the final cost invoiced?

In the tutorial they recommend to delete de database after testing, but for development deleting the database and recreating database and data every day is not suitable.

Answer 1

Correct, you need to maintain at least 1 node to keep the data, and you need at least 1 node for every 2 TiB of data.

So, if you upload 50 TiB of data, you need to keep 25 nodes at a minimum to maintain the data.

More info - https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/limits

Answer 2

You are charged for any resources in your instances (while the nodes are running and storage is being used), even if you aren't actively issueing queries. It's like Compute Engine or Cloud SQL.