# Google Compute Engine

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Google Compute Engine and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for reliability, engineering quality and cheap short trials, especially for infrastructure needs; critics call it a pain to use and report instances that cannot be forced off.

## What people warn about

- Hard to use, especially the API (2 comments): "Possibly the worst offender is the Compute Engine API" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130621)) "GCE in particular is a HUGE pain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130866))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Hetzner](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hetzner.md): 415 recommend
- [DigitalOcean](https://hackerapproved.com/p/digitalocean.md): 133 recommend
- [exe.dev](https://hackerapproved.com/p/exe-dev.md): 115 recommend
- [Hetzner Cloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hetzner-cloud.md): 99 recommend
- [OVH hosting](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ovh.md): 81 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://cloud.google.com/products/compute)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Google Compute Engine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-compute-engine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).