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I was wondering if the ingress controller of GKE comes either any additional costs, like a Google Cloud LoadBalancer, and if so is it possible to expose services with an ingress controller without the Google Cloud LoadBalancer. The same question is for GKE Gateway API.

I have tried to look at several pieces of documentation online and it is very contradicting.

Harsh Manvar
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Rick
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There is no additional cost running the Ingress controller with GCP however you have to pay for the HTTP LoadBalancer that Ingress controller create.

It will be the same for all ingress controllers you use GCP, Nginx, Apache.

While Gateway also it's the same, it's controller only provides more flexibility however with Gateway if you are leveraging Managed SSL Certificates, etc then you might have to pay for those services.

Incase if you would like to read more about Ingress vs Gateway checkout my article : https://medium.com/google-cloud/kubernetes-ingress-vs-gateway-api-647ee233693d

Harsh Manvar
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  • So both the ingress controller and the gateway use a load balancer to expose the applications to the internet. – Rick Apr 26 '23 at 15:55
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    yes and the controller manages rules and routes you defined. – Harsh Manvar Apr 26 '23 at 16:51
  • And they require one forwarding rule, right? And there is no free tier for this? – Rick Apr 26 '23 at 17:00
  • sorry didn't get your question if you could share little more – Harsh Manvar Apr 26 '23 at 17:25
  • The ingress controller or gateway both use a load balancer. And they both use one forwarding rule, do they use more/less. And is there a free tier so it is less expensive for having an ingress or gateway for my kubernetes cluster? – Rick Apr 26 '23 at 19:00
  • sorry i totally missed traveling, i think it would be minimum as if adding single routing rule in LB. i think there is no free tier single to five rules first cost in LB what i remember you can use calculator to get idea. – Harsh Manvar Apr 30 '23 at 09:12