GCP CUD: Are There Better Ways to Save Up on the Cloud?

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers Committed Use Discounts (CUDS), which provide significant discounts for cloud resources in exchange for a one or three-year commitment. There are two types of CUDs: Resource-Based and Spend-Based. While these discounts can save up to 57% on most resources, they come with risks such as changing requirements, vendor lock-in, loss of flexibility, and manual setup challenges. An alternative approach is using cloud costs optimization techniques like rightsizing, autoscaling, and spot instances, which provide similar savings without the commitment.