Hey. I’m G. My team and I decided to explore Google Cloud services while looking for options for hosting our business. I’m the schmuck in charge of that endeavor. We got sick of the inner machinations of the Microsoft amalgam (Azure, Entra) and have opted to stick with what we’re all semi-familiar with (at least in spirit).
Anyway, I created a ‘management project’, that is contained in an ‘app-enabled folder’, during one of my first visits while poking around with these instructions or whatever they so happen to be. I can’t delete it. Documentation says it cannot be deleted without a certain API. Then the docs say it can’t be deleted at all, and that I’d have to contact support to get that done. We don’t have anything more than a basic plan right now, and we’re only in a position to gauge with minimal commitment. So unfortunately, we’re not looking to invest more than we have in unbreaking the web applications and cloud services we continue to haphazardly interact with. Bottom line is I can’t get professional support or Google Cloud techs to delete my managed project for me. I’m sure this has come up before.
Any pointers on getting a clean slate for the Org? And then maybe I’ll consider reading up on these things before I go button mashing in our cloud infrastructure before it even gets off the ground.
Hi G, welcome! I’ve been there, button-mashing in cloud platforms can get tricky fast.
For your situation, Google Cloud’s managed projects inside an app-enabled folder can be stubborn because of ownership and API restrictions. If you’re on a basic/free plan, support can’t delete these for you, unfortunately.
Here are a few tips:
Use the Resource Manager API – You can attempt to delete the project programmatically if it’s not tied to essential resources. The docs are a bit confusing, but projects.delete is usually the endpoint you need.
Check IAM Permissions – Make sure your account has Project Owner permissions; without that, deletion won’t work.
Start Fresh in a New Organization – If deletion is too painful, sometimes the easiest approach is to create a completely new org/folder for testing and leave the old project as-is.
Billing Account Detach – If there’s a billing account linked, detaching it can sometimes unblock deletion.
Basically, for small exploratory setups, it’s often faster to spin up a new org/folder than to fight a stuck managed project.
Hope that helps you get a clean slate and continue experimenting without the headaches!
Hey G, welcome to the cloud chaos club. On Google Cloud, some “management projects”—especially those created automatically when you set up an organization or folder—aren’t deletable via the console, and without a support plan, you basically can’t get Google to remove them for you. The practical workaround is to leave the unmanaged projects empty and ignore them, then start fresh by creating a new project under your org or folder that you control fully. Make sure future test projects are standard projects, not special “management” or system ones. If you want a truly clean slate for experimentation without hitting these immovable objects, some teams just create a new Google Cloud Organization under a different account and start fresh there.