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Google BigQuery

iScore83–92 · #1/4
cloud.google.com/bigquery · Data warehouses
SEPT 2026 audit

A serverless analytical warehouse billed on bytes scanned, with storage priced separately by the gibibyte-hour.

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Entry paid planNothing until the second tebibyte. Queries are $6.25 per tebibyte scanned above the free tier, with no cluster, node or plan fee underneath — the only member here where a small workload genuinely costs zero.
Free tierYes
CategoryData warehouses

Updated 6 criteria comparedSources last checked

01.Evaluation guide

Who it suits

Queries that are occasional or selective. Nothing is provisioned, the first tebibyte scanned each month is free, and a workload that runs twice a week costs nothing between runs — the only member here where a small warehouse genuinely bills zero.

Consider something else if…

Your queries scan more than they return. Billing is on bytes READ, not rows produced, so $6.25 per tebibyte is a tax on unselective SQL and a dashboard refreshing every minute against a wide table is the expensive shape.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Each value below links to the page it was read from, with the sentence it came from. Criteria Google BigQuery does not publish are not listed.

Pricing
4 criteria
Free tierYes
Sources (1) →
What the free plan includes1 tebibyte of query data processed a month and 10 gibibytes of storage, both renewing monthly rather than expiring. The only standing free allowance of the four — the others offer a trial or a credit.
Sources (1) →
Entry paid planNothing until the second tebibyte. Queries are $6.25 per tebibyte scanned above the free tier, with no cluster, node or plan fee underneath — the only member here where a small workload genuinely costs zero.
Sources (1) →
  • BigQuery pricing ↗

    “1 tebibyte and above $6.25 / 1 tebibyte, per 1 month / account”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing

Pricing modelTwo compute models. On-demand bills the bytes each query processes, at $6.25 per tebibyte. Capacity bills slot-hours — reserved virtual CPUs — regardless of what the queries read. The first model punishes unselective queries and the second punishes idle capacity, and the choice is made per account rather than per query.
Sources (1) →
  • BigQuery pricing ↗

    “On-demand pricing (per TiB). With this pricing model, you are charged for the number of bytes processed by each query.”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing

Storage
1 criteria
Storage price$0.000031507 per gibibyte-hour for active logical storage and $0.000021918 for long-term, with the first 10 GiB free each month. Quoted hourly to nine decimal places; the page does not convert it to a monthly figure and neither does this record.
Sources (1) →
  • BigQuery pricing ↗

    “Active logical storage $0.000031507 / 1 gibibyte hour”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing

Observability
1 criteria
Query price$6.25 per tebibyte of data processed, after the first tebibyte each month. Charged on bytes READ, not rows returned, so the cost of a query is a property of the table scan rather than the result.
Sources (1) →
  • BigQuery pricing ↗

    “Queries (on-demand) 0 tebibyte to 1 tebibyte Free per 1 month / account”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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Every page here is sourced and dated.