AppEngine instance hours

Question

Is it possible to run app engine for free? Whatever I have tried, it seems to be not possible, I am also confused how they calculate the CPU hours.

For example, I am using Flex environment with maximum number of instances; 1, and CPU; 1.

I understand that appengine flex offers 28 hours free/a day. I have very simple nodejs admin panel, it is used few times a day, and I pay 30£ for it which is nonsense. How do they calculate the hours? How can I consume more than 24 hours/a day anyway? By using multiple vCPU's? Why is my code using multiple vCPU's when nobody is using it.

I've tired loads of different configurations but haven't gotten anywhere. I've checked that only one instance is every running. FOr reference here is my app yaml:

# Used to configure Google App Engine
# See https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/nodejs/configuring-your-app-with-app-yaml
# .gitignore contains the entry server/app.yaml so when this file is copied it isn't comitted to source control
runtime: nodejs
env: flex

skip_files:
  - ^(.*/)?.*/node_modules/.*$

automatic_scaling:
  max_num_instances: 1

resources:
  cpu: 1

instance_class: F1
threadsafe: false

the pricing (around 8£ for 8 days)

Answer 1

App Engine flexible environment does not offer a free tier. App Engine standard environment does offer a free tier. See if the Node.js standard environment works for your application. If not, consider switching to Compute Engine, which has an f1-micro instance in its free tier.