Google BigQuery Pricing 2026
Complete pricing guide with plans, hidden costs, and negotiation tips
Google BigQuery pricing varies by team size and features, ranging from $0 to $312.5 per month in 2026. Your actual cost depends on the tier you choose, contract length, and negotiated discounts.
Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.
- Free tier: Yes
- Billing: Monthly and annual (save 15-20%)
- Hidden costs: Add ~35% for implementation, support, and training
Google BigQuery offers 3 pricing tiers: Free Tier (Sandbox), On-Demand, Capacity (Editions). Standard paid plans include Free Tier (Sandbox) at $0/month. The On-Demand plan is teams with variable or unpredictable query workloads.
Compared to other data warehousing software, Google BigQuery is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.
Google BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse that enables super-fast SQL queries using the processing power of Google's infrastructure. As part of Google Cloud, BigQuery requires no infrastructure management and automatically scales to handle petabytes of data. Its pricing model is uniquely simple: you pay for the data your queries scan (on-demand) or reserve dedicated compute capacity (editions), plus separate storage costs.
BigQuery stands out with its generous free tier (1 TB queries + 10 GB storage per month), making it one of the most accessible enterprise data warehouses to get started with. On-demand pricing charges $6.25 per TiB scanned, while capacity-based editions offer predictable pricing for heavier workloads. For a typical mid-size analytics team scanning 5-20 TB per month, expect to spend $30-$125 on queries alone, though costs scale linearly with data volume.
All Google BigQuery Plans & Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Tier (Sandbox) | Free | Free 0 | Individual developers, students, and small experiments |
| On-Demand | Contact | Contact | Teams with variable or unpredictable query workloads |
| Capacity (Editions) | Contact | Contact | Organizations with heavy, predictable query workloads seeking cost control |
View all features by plan
Free Tier (Sandbox)
- 1 TB of query processing per month free
- 10 GB of active storage per month free
- No credit card required
- Standard SQL query support
- Up to 10 GB data loading per month
- Public dataset access
- Basic BigQuery ML support
- Shared slot pool for queries
On-Demand
- $6.25 per TiB of data scanned by queries
- First 1 TB/month of queries free
- Active storage at $0.02/GB/month
- Long-term storage at $0.01/GB/month (after 90 days untouched)
- Up to 2,000 concurrent query slots (shared)
- No upfront commitment required
- Per-query billing with 10 MB minimum
- Cached query results are free
- Streaming inserts at $0.05/GB
Capacity (Editions)
- Dedicated compute slots for predictable performance
- Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions
- Autoscaling to handle burst workloads
- Flat-rate pricing regardless of data scanned
- Slot commitments for 1-year or 3-year discounts
- Flex slots available for short-term needs
- Baseline and autoscale slot configuration
- Priority scheduling for critical workloads
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Frequently Asked Questions
01 How much does Google BigQuery cost?
BigQuery offers a free tier with 1 TB/month of query processing and 10 GB of storage. On-demand pricing charges $6.25 per TiB (~$5/TB) of data scanned, with no minimum commitment. For heavy workloads, capacity-based pricing through BigQuery Editions provides dedicated slots at predictable monthly rates.
02 Is BigQuery free?
Yes, BigQuery has a generous free tier that includes 1 TB of query processing and 10 GB of active storage per month at no cost and without requiring a credit card. This is sufficient for small projects and learning. Beyond the free tier, on-demand pricing starts at $6.25 per TiB scanned.
03 How does BigQuery on-demand pricing work?
On-demand pricing charges $6.25 per TiB of data your queries scan. You only pay for what you use, with no upfront commitment. Cached results and errored queries are free. The minimum charge per query is 10 MB. Partitioning and clustering your tables can significantly reduce the amount of data scanned and your costs.
04 What is BigQuery capacity pricing?
Capacity pricing lets you purchase dedicated compute slots instead of paying per query. BigQuery offers Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions with autoscaling. You pay for reserved slots by the hour, regardless of how much data your queries scan. This model is more cost-effective for teams scanning more than 1-2 TB daily.
05 How much does BigQuery storage cost?
BigQuery storage costs $0.02 per GB per month for active storage (tables modified in the last 90 days) and drops to approximately $0.01 per GB per month for long-term storage (tables untouched for 90+ days). The first 10 GB of storage is free each month.
06 How can I reduce BigQuery costs?
Key strategies include: partitioning tables by date to limit data scanned, clustering frequently filtered columns, using preview queries to estimate costs before running, setting project-level byte quotas, leveraging cached results, using materialized views, and switching to capacity pricing if you consistently scan more than 1-2 TB per day.