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This page shows you how to run fault-tolerant, stateless, or batch workloads at lower costs by using Spot VMs in your Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters and node pools.
OverviewSpot VMs are Compute Engine virtual machines (VMs) that are priced lower than the default standard VMs and provide no guarantee of availability. Spot VMs offer the same machine types and options as standard Compute Engine VMs. Compute Engine can reclaim Spot VMs at any time due to system events, such as when the resources are needed for standard VMs.
To learn more about Spot VMs in GKE, see Spot VMs.
Spot VMs replace the need to use preemptible VMs to run stateless, batch, or fault-tolerant workloads. In contrast to preemptible VMs, which expire after 24 hours, Spot VMs have no expiration time. Spot VMs are terminated when Compute Engine requires the resources to run standard VMs.
Note: GKE continues to support using preemptible VMs in your clusters and node pools.Spot VMs are also supported on GKE Autopilot clusters through Spot Pods. With Spot Pods, Autopilot automatically schedules and manages workloads on Spot VMs.
LimitationsBefore you start, make sure that you have performed the following tasks:
gcloud components update. Note: For existing gcloud CLI installations, make sure to set the compute/region property. If you use primarily zonal clusters, set the compute/zone instead. By setting a default location, you can avoid errors in the gcloud CLI like the following: One of [--zone, --region] must be supplied: Please specify location. You might need to specify the location in certain commands if the location of your cluster differs from the default that you set.You can create a new cluster using Spot VMs with the Google Cloud CLI or the Google Cloud console.
gcloudCreate a new cluster which uses Spot VMs in the default node pool instead of standard VMs:
gcloud container clusters create CLUSTER_NAME \
--spot
Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your new cluster.
To create a new cluster with a node pool using Spot VMs, perform the following steps:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create a Kubernetes cluster page.
From the navigation menu, in the Node pools section, click the name of the node pool you want to configure, and then click Nodes.
Select the Enable Spot VMs checkbox.
Configure the cluster as needed, and then click Create.
You can create new node pools using Spot VMs with the gcloud CLI or Google Cloud console. You can only enable Spot VMs on new node pools. You cannot enable or disable Spot VMs on existing node pools.
gcloudCreate a new node pool using Spot VMs:
gcloud container node-pools create POOL_NAME \
--cluster=CLUSTER_NAME \
--spot
Replace POOL_NAME with the name of your new node pool.
To create a new node pool using Spot VMs, perform the following steps:
Go to the Google Kubernetes Engine page in the Google Cloud console.
In the cluster list, click the name of the cluster you want to modify.
Click add_box Add node pool.
From the navigation menu, click Nodes.
Select the Enable Spot VMs checkbox.
Configure the node pool as needed, and then click Create.
GKE adds the cloud.google.com/gke-spot=true and cloud.google.com/gke-provisioning=spot (for nodes running GKE version 1.25.5-gke.2500 or later) labels to nodes that use Spot VMs. You can filter for this label in your Pod spec using either the nodeSelector field in your Pod spec or node affinity.
In the following example, you create a cluster with two node pools, one of which uses Spot VMs. Then, you deploy a stateless nginx application onto the Spot VMs, using a nodeSelector to control where GKE places the Pods.
Create a new cluster with the default node pool using standard VMs:
gcloud container clusters create CLUSTER_NAME
Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your new cluster.
Get credentials for the cluster:
gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME
Create a node pool using Spot VMs:
gcloud container node-pools create POOL_NAME \
--num-nodes=1 \
--spot
Replace POOL_NAME with the name of your new node pool.
Save the following manifest as a file named pi-app.yaml:
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
name: pi
spec:
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: pi
spec:
nodeSelector:
cloud.google.com/gke-spot: "true"
terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 25
containers:
- name: pi
image: perl:5.34.0
command: ["perl", "-Mbignum=bpi", "-wle", "print bpi(2000)"]
restartPolicy: Never
backoffLimit: 4
In this manifest, the nodeSelector field tells GKE to only schedule Pods on nodes that use Spot VMs.
Apply the manifest to your cluster:
kubectl apply -f pi-app.yaml
Describe the Pod:
kubectl describe pod pi
The output is similar to the following:
Name: pi-kjbr9
Namespace: default
Priority: 0
Node: gke-cluster-2-spot-pool-fb434072-44ct
...
Labels: app=pi
job-name=pi
Status: Succeeded
...
Controlled By: Job/pi
Containers:
...
Conditions:
Type Status
Initialized True
Ready False
ContainersReady False
PodScheduled True
Volumes:
...
Node-Selectors: cloud.google.com/gke-spot=true
Tolerations: node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s
node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal Scheduled 4m3s default-scheduler Successfully assigned default/pi-kjbr9 to gke-cluster-2-spot-pool-fb434072-44ct
Normal Pulling 4m2s kubelet Pulling image "perl:5.34.0"
Normal Pulled 3m43s kubelet Successfully pulled image "perl:5.34.0" in 18.481761978s
Normal Created 3m43s kubelet Created container pi
Normal Started 3m43s kubelet Started container pi
The Node field shows that GKE only schedules your Pods on nodes that use Spot VMs.
As a best practice, create clusters with at least one node pool without Spot VMs where you can place system workloads like DNS. You can use node taints and the corresponding tolerations to tell GKE to avoid placing certain workloads on Spot VMs.
To create a node pool with nodes that use Spot VMs and have node taints, use the --node-taints flag when creating the node pool:
gcloud container node-pools create POOL_NAME \
--node-taints=cloud.google.com/gke-spot="true":NoSchedule
--spot
To add the corresponding toleration to the Pods that you want to schedule to Spot VMs, modify your deployments and add the following to your Pod specification:
tolerations:
- key: cloud.google.com/gke-spot
operator: Equal
value: "true"
effect: NoSchedule
GKE only schedules Pods with this toleration onto the Spot VMs with the added node taint.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-08-12 UTC.
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