You can be billed for BigQuery data storage in either logical or physical (compressed) bytes, or a combination of both. By default, when creating a dataset in BigQuery, the unit of consumption for storage billing is logical bytes. In 2023, BigQuery introduced Logical Bytes Storage Billing to save costs:
- Logical Bytes Storage Billing
- By default
- Physical Bytes Storage Billing
- Introduced in July 2023
- Can reduce up to x8 storage costs
- Introduces billing for BigQuery data retention with time travel and fail-safe.
| Billing model | What do you pay for? |
|---|---|
| Physical (compressed) | - You pay for active bytes - You pay for long-term storage - You pay for time travel storage - You pay for fail-safe storage |
| Logical | - You pay for active storage - You pay for long-term storage - You don’t pay for time travel storage - You don’t pay for fail-safe storage |
How to choose between logical and physical billing model?
To get necessary data for assessment use this query:
- If the compression ratio is less than 2, you will not benefit from PBSB for their datasets.
- Il the total_costs_difference > 0 then you should consider moving to PBSB.
You can change the billing model at dataset-level.
References
New BigQuery billing model helps reduce physical storage costs. [Online]. Available at: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/new-bigquery-billing-model-helps-reduce-physical-storage-costs [Accessed 8 May 2025]. Overview of BigQuery storage. [Online]. Available at: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/storage_overview [Accessed 8 May 2025].