Pelanor ingests your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) billing data from BigQuery and augments it with service metadata to enable spend analysis, cost allocation, and anomaly detection. You can connect Pelanor to your GCP account once at the billing account level, or selectively by project—according to your tenancy model and security preferences. To retrieve billing data from your GCP billing account, we leverage a Pelanor‑owned service account; you grant it access to your billing export dataset, as well as read‑only access to resource metadata collection. See the Architecture & Permissions section below for the required permissions.

Prerequisites

  • GCP Console admin access to the billing account and projects you wish to integrate with Pelanor (orgnization-level access is recommended):
  • An enabled BigQuery billing export, with the detailed usage cost enabled.
Haven’t set up a billing export yet? Follow Google’s official documentation
here.

Glossary

TermMeaning
Billing AccountGCP account that receives and pays charges
ProjectGCP organizational unit that owns resources
WorkspacePelanor environment for a customer or team
BigQuery ExportBilling data sent to BigQuery for analysis
MetadataService-specific data beyond the billing export (API calls, logs, etc.)

Integration Options

Pelanor will ingest detailed billing data from the provided billing account. Metadata will be collected from all projects associated with this billing account. Use this configuration for seamless integration across your entire GCP stack. Any new projects created under this billing account in the future will be automatically visible in Pelanor.

Option 2: Billing Account + Scoped Projects

Billing data will be collected from the main billing account; resource metadata will only be ingested from a static list of projects (entered directly in the Integration wizard). Use this configuration if you have security or compliance restrictions or only want to integrate a certain part of your environment with Pelanor.

Option 3: Projects Only (No Billing Export)

Pelanor will only collect metadata from a static list of projects (entered directly in the Integration wizard). Use this configuration in the following scenarios:
  • Onboarding new customers in multi-tenant organizations with centralized billing, such as Managed Service Providers (MSPs) or cloud resellers.
  • Integrating additional projects into Pelanor when the initial integration was performed using Option 2 (Billing Account + Scoped Projects)

Installation Steps

1

Create a New GCP Integration

Log in to the Pelanor platform, then select the Integrations menu in the left-hand sidebar. Select GCP to start the integration wizard.
2

Select Integration Method

Select the GCP integration method used for this installation. Refer to the above section, Integration Options, to determine the most suitable GCP integration method for your organization.
3

Fill in Details and Run gcloud CLI Commands

Input the parameters required by the integration wizard. Depending on your selected integration method, this may include your billing export name and/or list of projects. You’ll also be prompted to execute commands using the gcloud CLI.
4

Enable Cost Allocation (optional, GKE only)

To enable Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cost breakdowns by cluster, namespace, and labels, run the following command for every cluster you intend to install the Pelanor Kubernetes agent on:
gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME --enable-cost-allocation
5

Validate Integration

You can verify your integration works by visiting the Explore page and filtering by Vendor = GCP. Data typically appears in Pelanor within 24–48 hours after completing the integration.

Architecture & Permissions

Pelanor requests the following IAM permissions, all in read-only mode. If you omit certain permissions, some insights within the platform (including metadata displayed in reports) might not be displayed.
PermissionPurpose
bigquery.datasets.getAccess billing datasets
bigquery.jobs.getRetrieve query details
bigquery.jobs.listRead statistics about BigQuery jobs
bigquery.jobs.listAllList BigQuery jobs not initiated by the Pelanor principal user
bigquery.tables.getRead table metadata
bigquery.tables.listFetch BigQuery table names
cloudsql.instances.listCloud SQL cost insights
compute.instances.listMap workloads to instances
compute.networks.listAnalyze network configs
compute.regions.listRetrieve regions enabled for your organization’s account
compute.routers.getRouting cost analysis
compute.routers.listList Cloud Router resources
compute.routes.listTraffic route mapping
container.clusters.listDiscover GKE clusters
container.nodes.listNode-level allocation
resourcemanager.projects.getDiscover projects
resourcemanager.projects.getIamPolicyCross-project IAM analysis
billing.resourceAssociations.listEnumerate projects associated with a billing account (project discovery)