Temporarily disable gcp load balancer

Tried to replicate but still unable to to stop Load Balancer and the only option was to delete the Load Balancer. I see some previous issue like this (Stop Google Cloud Load Balancer) and the only way was to delete to minimize costs.

You can also consider/review using Cloud Armor policies to Control Traffic on your Load Balancers. But still the cost will be based on what you are using.

By Configuring Cloud Armor Policies, the external IP will still open to the clients but Load Balancers will respond with the error code you configured and will not forward request to the Backend VMs.