I’m experiencing a similar issue hosting MCP Server on Cloud Run with scale-to-zero for cost optimization. As far as I know, Cloud Functions v2 and Cloud Run both are container-based, and they tend to have noticeable startup times.

In contrast, AWS Lambdas, which run on Firecracker, have sub-second startup latency, often just a few hundred milliseconds.

Is there anything comparable on GCP that achieves similar low latency cold starts?

I'm a huge GCP fan, but cloud run wouldn't fit our use case because of the routing and ephemeral nature. I think you would have to try to build something yourself using GKE + gVisor