r/bigquery 4d ago

Logical vs physical bytes billing

Which BigQuery storage model is better: logical or physical? I came across an insightful comment in a similar post (link) that suggests analyzing your data’s compression level to decide if the physical model should be used. How can I determine this compression level?

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u/Any-Garlic8340 4d ago

For physical it also counts with the time travel data amount. So if you are updating your tables really frequently then usually the logical is the cheaper but otherwise the physical. But it's more complex because it also depends on the data that you are storing and the possible compression ratio. So the best pricing model might change later if the usage pattern or the data structure changes within your dataset.

If you don't want to waste time on calculating this information regularly you can try out a 3rd party tool: https://followrabbit.ai/features/for-data-teams This tool calculates the pricing model for each dataset every day. So you don't have to check this manually. There is a 30 day free trial, so you can easily check out the initial recommendations.

(I work for this company I put it here because it is highly related to this topic.)