# Unattended Google Cloud Projects | Cloud Efficiency Hub Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/unattended-google-cloud-projects Projects spun up for experiments, hackathons, proofs of concept, training, vendor evaluations or by people who have since left the company often keep... By: PointFive Updated: 2026-09-28 [Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) The short version Projects spun up for experiments, hackathons, proofs of concept, training, vendor evaluations or by people who have since left the company often keep VMs, disks, databases, buckets, static IPs and other resources running long after anyone uses them. PointFive Research Cloud cost research at PointFive GCP service [GCP Resource Manager](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/cloud-services/gcp-resource-manager) Category [Other](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/other) Reference CER-0497 Type Governance Gap ## Explanation Why the waste happens and who it affects. Each of those resources keeps billing to the project's linked billing account. Resource-level checks catch some of this, but they miss the bigger picture: a project can be abandoned as a whole while each of its resources looks individually plausible, especially when its creator has left. The unattended project recommender in Active Assist targets exactly this, flagging low-usage projects for cleanup and projects without active owners for reclaiming, together with an estimate of what removing them would save. ## Billing model The pricing dimensions that drive this cost. Resource Manager has no charge of its own; the cost is the resources inside the project. Project resources Every billable resource in a project is charged to the linked Cloud Billing account until it is deleted or the project is shut down Project shutdown Shutting down a project stops all billing and resource usage and disconnects the Cloud Billing account Pending deletion period The project stays restorable for 30 days before it and its resources are permanently deleted, though some services may delete data sooner ## How to detect 4 checks to find it in your estate. - Review unattended project recommendations (recommender google.resourcemanager.projectUtilization.Recommender) in the console, gcloud or the Recommender API; the recommender only covers projects that belong to a Google Cloud organization - CLEANUP\_PROJECT recommendations flag projects with low usage over the last 30 days, based on API activity, service accounts, networking, user activity and service usage; RECLAIM\_PROJECT flags projects that are in use but have no active owner - Use the recommendation's cost impact, an estimate based on the project's trailing 30-day resource costs, to prioritize which projects to review first - Do not act on a single insight: Google warns that one day's insight is not a reliable indicator, so confirm with recommendations that persist and with the project's owner or labels ## How to fix 5 ways to remove the waste. - Contact the listed owners, export any data or configuration that must be kept, and shut down projects confirmed as unused; the 30-day pending deletion window allows recovery if something was missed - Note that Cloud Storage and Pub/Sub data might be deleted sooner than 30 days after shutdown, so back those up before shutting down if they matter - Assign a new owner to projects flagged for reclaiming instead of deleting them, and review their resources for rightsizing - Apply project liens to projects that must not be deleted, such as those holding active committed use discounts - Prevent recurrence by requiring owner, cost center and expiry labels on new projects and by reviewing unattended project recommendations on a regular schedule ## Documentation Vendor references for pricing and configuration. - [Unattended project recommender docs.cloud.google.com](https://docs.cloud.google.com/recommender/docs/unattended-project-recommender) - [Recommenders docs.cloud.google.com](https://docs.cloud.google.com/recommender/docs/recommenders) - [Delete and restore projects docs.cloud.google.com](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/delete-restore-projects) ## Related inefficiencies [Browse the library](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) - Google Cloud Marketplace CER-0227 ### [Billing Account Migration Creating Emergency List-Price Purchases in Google Cloud Marketplace](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/billing-account-migration-creating-emergency-list-price-purchases-in-google-cloud-marketplace) Changing a Google Cloud billing account can unintentionally break existing Marketplace subscriptions. If entitlements are tied to the original billing account, the subscription may fail or become invalid, prompting teams to make urgent,... Other - GCP Cloud Logging CER-0262 ### [Suboptimal Storage for Logs](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/suboptimal-storage-for-logs-fd1d9) Many organizations retain all logs in Cloud Logging's standard storage, even when the data is rarely queried or required only for audit or compliance. Log bucket cost comes mainly from the per-GiB storage charge applied when logs are... Other - GCP Cloud Logging CER-0253 ### [Resources Generating Excessive INFO Logs](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/resources-generating-excessive-info-logs-6c920) Some GCP services and workloads generate INFO-level logs at very high frequencies - for example, load balancers logging every HTTP request or GKE nodes logging system health messages. While valuable for debugging, these logs can flood... Other --- Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.