Nat

Name: Nat
Brand: Google
Rating: 4.3 (10 reviews)

Nat is a managed Network Address Translation service on Google Cloud that provides outbound internet connectivity and return-traffic translation for workloads without external IP addresses, centralizing egress control and reducing per-instance public IP exposure.

Est 1998|Valuation $4081.3B|Raised $26.1M

LinkedIn 41.9M|Website|Web traffic 3.3M|FTEs 198,933|HQ Mountain View, California, US

MarketsCloud Infrastructure Providers (IaaS/PaaS)Cloud Infrastructure Providers (IaaS/PaaS)

Published Oct 12, 2026

01Common complaints

- Company sizes or stages where this product is overkill or insufficient - Very small dev/test environments may prefer assigning external IPs directly or using a simpler architecture if security requirements allow. - Industries or use cases where competitors are clearly superior - Organizations that require an integrated, cross-cloud NAT + policy + observability platform may prefer a dedicated cloud networking/security solution rather than a single-cloud NAT. - Technical requirements that this product cannot meet - Unsolicited inbound connectivity is not supported by Cloud NAT. - Budget constraints that make alternatives more appropriate - When NAT processed-data charges and egress charges form a large portion of expected spend, alternatives include: - Re-architecting to reduce NAT traffic (private service endpoints / private routing). - Using private connectivity (peering/interconnect) where applicable. - Self-managed NAT instances (trading lower cost for increased operations). - Specific workflows or integrations where the product falls short - Workloads requiring deterministic egress identities with advanced filtering typically need an additional egress proxy/firewall layer. - Red flags in the buying process - Treating Cloud NAT as low-cost by default without modeling processed GiB and egress patterns is risky. - Deploying NAT without enabling and reviewing logs and metrics early can make later cost attribution and troubleshooting difficult. - Current limitations acknowledged by the vendor - No unsolicited inbound connections; NAT applies only to return traffic for established connections. - Logging is not exhaustive; dropped-packet logging has constraints and may only cover certain dropped packet categories. - Features on the roadmap (not yet available) - No specific roadmap commitments for Cloud NAT were identified in the accessible official sources during this review. - Scale limitations - Practical limits commonly manifest as port exhaustion under very high concurrent outbound connection volumes, requiring tuning of minimum ports per VM, adding NAT IPs, or re-architecting. - Security or compliance gaps - Compliance coverage is primarily provided at the Google Cloud platform level; Cloud NAT-specific attestations are not typically published as standalone reports. - Technical debt or architectural limitations mentioned in reviews - Misconfiguration can lead to packet drops and perceived instability, according to community reports. - API limitations or integration constraints - NAT behavior and routing interactions can be non-obvious, especially when instances also have external IPs (which may cause traffic to bypass NAT).

02Why they buy

- Competitive advantages validated by customer feedback (not just vendor claims) - Reviewers commonly note that it enables private instances to access the internet without public IPs, which can improve perceived security posture. - Reviewers also report that it is a managed, scalable cloud capability, while highlighting the need for careful configuration to avoid issues. - Unique features and capabilities competitors lack - No clear exclusive feature relative to AWS/Azure NAT gateways was identified in accessible sources; differentiation is primarily derived from integration within the Google Cloud ecosystem. - Differentiation from competitors based on reviews - Reviews emphasize the integration and managed nature of the service; criticisms emphasize configuration and cost considerations. - Value propositions with evidence from case studies - Vendor blog materials describe reliability and scalability for specific customers; these are vendor-published examples and lack independent verification. - Areas where competitors have advantages - Competitors may offer more community guidance, reference architectures, or ecosystem integrations in some regions or customer segments.

03Field reports

Gartner Peer Insights

Attempts to locate Cloud NAT-specific Gartner Peer Insights reviews did not yield identifiable product-level reviews from publicly indexed content during this research window (Gartner Peer Insights is often gated and product categories may differ).

G2 (examples of positive and critical feedback)

- Positive (mid-market engineer): - "It reduces cost by assigning nat IP address to the VMs, and also since your compte engine does not have a public IP address attached, it is more secured." (G2 reviewer) - Limitation/negative (same reviewer): - "NATs does not support inbound connections, hence any services needs to be accessible over the public will be problematic." (G2 reviewer) - Positive with caveat (enterprise DevOps): - "Allow VMs to get data without using its public IP. Also it is scalable service by GCP" and "Sometime packet drops can be noticed if it is not configured correctly" (G2 reviewer) - Learning curve (small business reviewer): - "initial settin up takes a bit of learning curve" (G2 reviewer)

Reddit (examples of critical feedback on cost and behavior)

- Cost surprise / architecture issue: - A user reported that Cloud NAT pricing resulted in unexpected charges after discovering that a portion of traffic was being processed by NAT unnecessarily due to name resolution/public endpoints rather than private access patterns. - Confusion about what traffic is NAT’d: - A user troubleshooting costs referenced uncertainty about whether certain traffic to Google APIs/services was processed by NAT, based on observed usage.

Hacker News (technical discussion)

In a discussion about IP ownership and NAT behavior, a commenter asserted that Cloud NAT operates in the described manner; this is a qualitative technical comment rather than a formal benchmark.

TrustRadius

No Cloud NAT product page/reviews were found in the accessible TrustRadius sources during this pass.

Balance: include both positive and negative reviews

G2 snapshots available during this research window show a majority of positive ratings, with some lower ratings also observed (e.g., citing a learning curve).

Common criticisms and complaints (support issues, bugs, missing features)

Reported issues include packet drops or unreliable behavior when misconfigured, cost surprises related to unexpected NAT usage, and confusion about what traffic is subject to NAT.

Reasons customers chose this product over alternatives

Avoid assigning public IPs to instances while still enabling outbound internet access.
Managed operation reduces the need to run customer-managed NAT instances or appliances.

Reasons some customers moved away or considered alternatives

Users who are cost-sensitive may prefer self-managed NAT instances or architecture changes (private endpoints / same-region placement) to reduce NAT processed-data charges.

Specific outcomes customers reported

Reviews emphasize qualitative outcomes (improved security posture by removing public IPs, perceived ease of setup). Quantified ROI figures were not prominent in accessible reviews.

Customer pain points and frustrations mentioned in reviews

Unexpected billing related to NAT processing.
Complexity around port allocation settings and ensuring traffic is routed via intended paths.
Reports of delays/timeouts or packet drops in community threads (not always clearly attributable to Cloud NAT vs. upstream routing/DNS).

Deal-breakers and reasons customers did not purchase

Requirement for unsolicited inbound connectivity.
Very high traffic volumes where NAT processed-data charges would dominate costs.

Case Studies

- Detailed customer success stories with metrics - A Google Cloud blog includes a customer-style quote indicating successful deployment for a specific use case; this content appears in vendor-published materials and should be treated as vendor-provided information rather than independent validation. - Specific results and quantified business impact - Public vendor materials emphasize reliability, scalability, and simplification; independent, third-party audited ROI numbers were not found in the accessible materials. - Implementation details and time to value - Typical implementation steps include creating a Cloud NAT gateway (regional), configuring a Cloud Router, assigning subnets and IP ranges, and enabling logging/metrics for troubleshooting. - Challenges faced during adoption and how they were resolved - Common challenges surfaced in community threads include sizing port allocations, addressing unexpected routing through NAT, and using NAT logs and metrics to troubleshoot drops. - Note when metrics are vendor-published without independent verification - Most performance and scalability claims in official materials are vendor-published and lack externally reproduced benchmarks. - Include mixed results - Community reports include scenarios where NAT-related costs were significant for CI clusters and scenarios where traffic patterns caused unexpected NAT usage.

04Best fit

Ideal Customer Profile

- Company sizes - Organizations running production workloads on Google Cloud: - Small teams running private services that require controlled internet egress. - Mid-market and large enterprise organizations needing standardized egress without public IP sprawl. - Industries and verticals where adoption is strongest - Common across industries with a security-conscious posture (finance, healthcare, SaaS); accessible sources did not enumerate product-specific vertical case studies. - Roles and personas: decision makers AND end users - Decision makers - Cloud/network architects, security engineering leadership, platform engineering leads. - End users - DevOps/SRE, Kubernetes platform teams, infrastructure engineers managing VPC design. - Pain points and challenges the product addresses - Removing public IPs from workloads while preserving outbound access. - Centralizing outbound IP allowlisting and egress identity management. - Reducing operational tasks associated with running self-managed NAT instances. - Qualification criteria: attributes of a good fit - Primary need for outbound internet access from private workloads. - Ability to design for minimal accidental NAT usage (use of private endpoints / Private Google Access, region-local deployment). - Willingness to use Cloud Logging/Monitoring for troubleshooting. - Deal disqualifiers: indicators of poor fit - Requirement for unsolicited inbound connectivity. - Need for integrated L7 egress filtering or policy enforcement at the NAT layer. - Very high egress volumes where processed-data charges dominate and alternatives (private endpoints, peering, self-managed NAT) are more cost-effective.

05The pitch

What the product does (core value proposition in objective terms)

- Cloud NAT is Google Cloud’s managed Network Address Translation service that provides outbound connectivity (and return traffic for established connections) for workloads that do not have external IP addresses. - It supports NAT for outbound traffic to the public internet, and depending on configuration/features can also be used for certain private connectivity scenarios (for example, NAT between networks where address space overlaps via Private NAT capabilities described in documentation). - It does not permit unsolicited inbound connections; it only supports translation for return traffic on established connections.

Target market and market positioning

Target users include teams running private Compute Engine VMs, private GKE nodes, Cloud Run, and other supported serverless/managed runtimes that require controlled egress without assigning public IPs to each workload.
Positioned as a managed service (no customer-managed NAT instances/appliances); typically used to reduce public IP exposure and centralize egress.

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