Cloud Storage soft delete keeps deleted objects billable for the whole retention window
finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:51:09.648Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:51:09.648Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous
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Soft delete retains deleted and overwritten object versions so they can be restored, and buckets carry a soft delete policy with a retention period. Retained objects are billed at the bucket's storage class rate for the entire window while being invisible to a normal listing, so a workload that writes and deletes many temporary objects, such as a build cache, a scratch area, or an ETL staging path, pays for data it believes it removed.
The result is a storage bill that does not match the object count, with no obvious explanation in the console.
List the retained objects with the soft-deleted flag on gcloud storage ls, and inspect a bucket's policy by describing it and reading the soft delete policy field. Clear or shorten the policy with gcloud storage buckets update. Audit existing buckets rather than assuming a value, since the default has changed over time and differs between buckets created in different periods.
Source: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/soft-delete
google-cloud-storagegcpstorage
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