<p>I use GKE for years and I wanted to experiment with GKE with AutoPilot mode, and my initial expectation was, it starts with 0 worker nodes, and whenever I deploy a workload, it automatically scales the nodes based on requested memory and CPU. However, I created a GKE Cluster, there is nothing related to nodes in UI, but in <code>kubectl get nodes</code> output I see there are 2 nodes. Do you have any idea how to start that cluster with no node initially?</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fcqXO.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fcqXO.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a>
<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wGkGW.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wGkGW.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a>
<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/73efy.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/73efy.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>

<p>The principle of GKE autopilot is NOT TO worry about the node, it's managed for you. No matter if there is 1, 2 or 10 node to your cluster, you don't pay for them, you pay only when a POD run in your cluster (CPU and Memory time usage).</p>
<p>So, you can't handle the number of node, number of pools and low level management like that, something similar to serverless product (Google prefers saying &quot;nodeless&quot; cluster)</p>
<p>At the opposite, it's great to already have resources provisioned that you don't pay on your cluster, you will deploy and scale quicker!</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>EDIT 1</strong></p>
<p>You can have a look to <a href="https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/pricing#cluster_management_fee_and_free_tier" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the pricing</a>. You have a flat fee of $74.40 per month ($0.10/hour) for the control plane. And then you pay your pods (CPU + Memory).</p>
<p>You have 1 free cluster per Billing account.</p>
