Google Cloud Functions

Score8.7 out of 10

14 Reviews and Ratings

What is Google Cloud Functions?

Google Cloud Functions enables users to run code in the cloud with no servers or containers to manage. Cloud Functions is a scalable, pay-as-you-go functions as a service (FaaS) product to help build and connect event driven services with simple, single purpose code.

Categories & Use Cases

Function/Database Integration
The product’s support for connecting databases to functions. Describes how easy, fast, or natively-supported database integration is.
Category average: 8.8
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
Category average: 8.5
Dashboards
Users can create, customize and share dashboards, which provide an overview of the most important metrics.
Category average: 6.3

DevOps Stack Integration
The product’s capacity to integrate with other products in a DevOps stack.
Category average: 8.7
Programming Language Diversity
The product’s support level for a variety of programming languages. For example, a 9 could indicate that the product supports all common programming languages. A 5 could indicate that the product only supports some common languages, or that its support for important languages is buggy or incomplete.
Category average: 8.7
Runtime API Authoring
The product’s support for authoring functions via API endpoints.
Category average: 8.1

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Google Cloud Functions.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

25.0%

1,262 installations of 5,038

#2 most frequent

Information

15.5%

779 installations of 5,038

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

7.8%

394 installations of 5,038

Roland Alden View profile

co-founder in Information Technology at Methodical Software (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use functions to package complex logic that we want to run outside of the browser or low/no code tool we use (Retool). Also when this code interacts with a cloud based resource (such as a database) we tend to colocate a cloud function with that resource. The function also allow us to compartmentalize logic that belongs together and separate it from unrelated logic, secrets, permissions, etc. and/or we use functions to separate code that is 100% Python from code that is 100% Javascript.

Pros

The cloud functions console provides a one-stop browser IDE for creating a function and looking at logs when it is running.
A Google Cloud Function can interact with other Google Services (cron, pub/sub, etc.) without having to write much boilerplate code.

Cons

It's hard/impossible to copy all the various settings that are important from one (existing) cloud function that you have written and perfected to create new function based on that model. Still lots of back and forth and double checking. All the various settings that matter are somewhat scattered around.
There are several different flavors of Cloud Functions and ways of invoking them and these have different constraints and capacities. Google has a mish-mash of terminology and it's not easy to figure out which things you should choose for which scenario. There is no "wizard" to help you. There is Gemini but it's not well connected to the IDE and frankly has not much clue how to direct you to solve a problem in the IDE or just see a setting.

Return on Investment

GCF are super cost effective. The "free tier" is generous and charges are low given the scale you can achieve simply by dialing in a few parameters.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

AWS Lambda and Retool

Other Software Used

Neo4j, Google Translate, ChatGPT, OpenAI Codex

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Everything is running on the Google Cloud and the Google Cloud Functions are the core of it. All our backend that was developed on node and runs on Google Cloud Functions integrated with Firebase. The integration is seamless and the performance is exceptional. The fact we have all our oAuth connected and user management can be done via panel makes it a no brainer.

Pros

integration with oAuth
integration with Firebase
integration with React Frontend

Cons

Integration with Antigravity
Gemini could code natively for it
Integration with non-GCP tools is harder

Return on Investment

For training purposes, it is free
Budgeting makes it cap the use
monitoring makes it predictable

Usability

Alternatives Considered

AWS Lambda

Other Software Used

GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Cloud Functions to handle multiple use cases :
- Automate resources shutdown for out of production environments (for Google SQL & Google Kubernetes Engine)
- Recover socials data and informations for analysis

Pros

Easy to use and doesn't require a lot of cloud knowledge
UI/UX made simple and accessible

Cons

Needing a zip file is problematic (when wanting to automate deployment for example).
Requires another solution to execute automatically (ex. cloud scheduler).

Return on Investment

Using it for FinOps, we cut the bill in 2 for certain services (out of production).

Google Cloud Functions

What is Google Cloud Functions?

Categories & Use Cases