Estimate total monthly cost to run a three-tier web app on Compute Engine and Cloud SQL. What is the recommended approach?

The Google Cloud Pricing Calculator is the recommended tool for estimating costs. It allows you to specify individual Google Cloud resources (Compute Engine instances, Cloud SQL databases, networking, storage, etc.) and their configurations (machine types, storage capacity, network egress, etc.) to generate a detailed cost estimate. Using similar-sized instances for web servers and comparing Cloud SQL to existing on-premises machines provides a practical basis for estimation. Creating a spreadsheet is overly manual and prone to errors, as prices change and resource configurations are complex. Using the Cloud Operations template is incorrect because Cloud Operations (formerly Stackdriver) is for monitoring and logging, not cost estimation. Implementing and load testing an architecture is expensive and time-consuming, making it impractical for initial cost estimation.