Is there a free tier in Google Cloud Platform?

In the Google Cloud Platform for almost all services there seems to be a free tier (e.g. Compute Engine, App Engine, Bigtable, Cloud Datastore etc.). Is it possible to activate these free tiers without providing a credit card data? If these data are required, could you be later billed without your explicit consent?

Which cloud services are free?

With the AWS Free Tier program, AWS offers users a hands-on experience with a wide range of cloud services at zero charge, including a free EC2 instance with 15 GB transfer per month, 5 GB standard storage and 20 GB databases. All these benefits last for a year. 3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

What are the best cloud providers?

Choosing between the three biggest cloud providers - Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - can be a testing proposition, but one of the best things about them is that they all offer a free tier for spinning up an instance and trying out the platform before you buy.

What are cloud tiers?

However, we will be including resources where you can find more information about pricing by different cloud providers. Cloud tiers are broadly categorised as Hot or Cold. Hot tiers are used to store frequently accessed data. The storage costs will be higher, but data access is immediate and access charges for data will be lower or free.