GKE: 0/3 nodes are available: Insufficient cpu Google Cloud / Firebase Origin: Platform & cloud OSI layer 7 · Application Last updated 4 Nov 2026

GKE/Kubernetes: Pod unschedulable — 0/3 nodes are available: 3 Insufficient cpu

The scheduler found no node with enough free CPU/memory for the pod's resource requests.

Exact message you may see 0/3 nodes are available: 3 Insufficient cpuInsufficient cpu GKE pod pendingpod didn't trigger scale-up: it wouldn't fit if a new node is addedFailedScheduling 0/ nodes are availableInsufficient memory pod unschedulable
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Seen on: Google Cloud Kubernetes

Meaning

Requests (not limits) decide scheduling. Lower the pod's requests, add nodes (enable cluster autoscaler), or use a bigger machine type. In GKE Autopilot requests are what you pay for, so right-size them. Autoscaler may log NotTriggerScaleUp reasons.

Common causes

  • Requests larger than any node can provide
  • Cluster at capacity without autoscaler
  • Autoscaler blocked by quota or max nodes
  • Node taints/affinity excluding all nodes
  • DaemonSets consuming capacity

⚡ Quick fix

  1. kubectl describe pod POD and read Events
  2. Reduce resources.requests or add nodes
  3. Enable autoscaling and check quotas

Detailed fix by platform

kubectl

  1. kubectl describe pod POD | tail -20 ; kubectl top nodes

How to diagnose

  1. Events — Insufficient cpu/memory?
  2. Capacity — Node allocatable?
  3. Autoscaler — Enabled, quota ok?

🔧 Still not fixed?

Many errors look alike. If the steps above didn’t solve it, one of these is probably what you’re facing:

Where this error sits

Origin: Platform & cloud. Errors that are often confused with or caused by this one (click to open):

API has not been used in project before or it is disabled — Google Cloud: 403 SERVICE_DISABLED — Cloud Resource Manager API has not been used in project 123456 before or it is disabled. Enable it by visiting (Google Cloud / Firebase)API has not been used…Error 403: API has not been used in project (Terraform) — Terraform: Error: Error creating Network: googleapi: Error 403: Compute Engine API has not been used in project 123 before or it is disabled (Terraform)Error 403: API has no…FailedScheduling — Kubernetes: Pod stuck in Pending — FailedScheduling: 0/3 nodes are available (Kubernetes)FailedSchedulingGKE Ingress: backends marked UNHEALTHY (502) — GKE Ingress: Some backend services are in UNHEALTHY state / 502 Server Error from the load balancer (Google Cloud / Firebase)GKE Ingress: backends…gke-gcloud-auth-plugin not found — kubectl: error: executable gke-gcloud-auth-plugin not found — it looks like you are trying to use a client-go credential plugin that is not installed (Google Cloud / Firebase)gke-gcloud-auth-plugi…GKE: Quota 'CPUS' exceeded — GKE/Compute: Quota 'CPUS' exceeded. Limit: 8.0 in region us-central1 (QUOTA_EXCEEDED) (Google Cloud / Firebase)GKE: Quota 'CPUS' exc…Google provider: could not find default credentials — Terraform: Error: Attempted to load application default credentials since neither `credentials` nor `access_token` was set in the provider block. No credentials loaded (Terraform)Google provider: coul…OOMKilled — Kubernetes: OOMKilled (exit code 137) (Kubernetes)OOMKilledGKE: 0/3 …

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