Cloud Run is a managed compute platform by Google Cloud that enables users to run stateless containers accessible via web requests. It abstracts away infrastructure management, letting developers focus on building applications. Built on Knative, Cloud Run simplifies deploying and managing containerized applications in the Google Cloud ecosystem and allows applications to scale automatically based on demand. Launched in April 2019, Cloud Run has since received updates and improvements, becoming generally available in November 2019.
Key features of Cloud Run include automatic scaling, support for any language, library, and binary, built-in security, integration with Google Cloud services, and the ability to deploy from source code. It allows developers to run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. Cloud Run is suitable for web applications, APIs, mobile backends, microservices, and data processing. Cloud Run charges only for the resources used, rounded up to the nearest 100 milliseconds, following a pay-as-you-go pricing model. There is also a free tier available, which includes a certain amount of free CPU, RAM, and requests per month. As of February 2026, Cloud Run is available in many regions.
