Last Updated: May 15, 2025

Follow the 9 simple steps to estimate GA4 BigQuery costs in advance based on the average number of monthly events recorded in your GA4 property.

Step-1: Estimate the average number of events your GA4 property records per month.

You can get this data from the GA4 interface under Reports > Engagement > Events > Event Count metric.

Let’s assume there are 400,000 events per month.

If your event count per active user is 5.6 then it means:

400,000 events / 5.6 events/user = ~71,429 users per month.

Step-2: Estimate the average storage size per event.

Based on my observation, 1 event is approximately 0.00067342898 MB, or roughly 673 bytes.

This estimate can vary depending on the number of custom parameters, but it serves as a good baseline.

Step-3: Calculate total storage volume per month by multiplying the number of monthly events by the average size per event.

For example:

400,000 events × 0.00067342898 MB

= 269.371592 MB per month (≈ 0.269 GB)

Step-4: Estimate total data stored over time.

If you retain 12 months of historical data in BigQuery, your total stored volume will be: 0.269 GB × 12 = 3.232 GB after 1 year.

Step-5: Calculate monthly storage cost.

BigQuery gives you 10 GB of active logical storage for free per month.

If your total stored data exceeds 10 GB, you pay $0.02 per additional GB per month.

Since 3.232 GB < 10 GB => Storage cost = $0.00 per month.

Step-6: Estimate monthly data processing volume.

If you query the full 3.232 GB every day for 30 days:

3.232 GB/day × 30 = 96.96 GB processed per month

Step-7: Calculate monthly processing cost.

BigQuery offers 1 TB (1024 GB) of free on-demand query processing per month.

Since 96.96 GB < 1 TB => Processing cost = $0.00 per month.

Step-8: Estimate monthly data transfer cost.

GA4-to-BigQuery export transfers ≈ 269.37 MB/month.

Since 269.37 MB < 1 TB => Transfer cost = $0.00 per month.

Step-9: Calculate the total estimated monthly cost.

As long as your stored data remains below 10 GB and your queries and transfers stay within the free tier limits:

Total cost = $0.00 per month

If you are a heavy GA4 BigQuery user, you might see a bill of a dollar or two each month. Even then, it is negligible.

For 99% of businesses, using BigQuery with GA4 is less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

The cost of using BigQuery depends on the following factors (but is not limited to):

1. Data Storage.
2. Data Processing.
3. Data Transfer.
4. BigQuery Edition.
5. Data replication.

#1 Data Storage Cost.

This is the cost associated with the amount of data you store in BigQuery. 

The more data you store, the more you will pay.

#2 Data Processing cost.

This is the cost associated with the amount of data you process with each query you run. 

The more data you query, the more you will pay.

#3 Data Transfer cost.

This is the cost associated with the amount of data transferred in and out of BigQuery.

This cost can vary based on the source and destination of the data transfer.

#4 BigQuery Edition cost.

This is the cost associated with the type of BigQuery Edition you use.

BigQuery offers three editions: ‘Standard’, ‘Enterprise’, and ‘Dedicated’.

The ‘Enterprise’ and ‘Dedicated’ editions offer more features and performance but are also more expensive.

#5 Data Replication cost.

When you replicate your data to multiple regions in BigQuery, you will incur storage and transfer costs for each replicated region. 

BigQuery allows you to replicate your data to multiple geographic regions to improve data availability, reduce latency, or comply with specific regulatory requirements.

For more details on BigQuery pricing, check out the official resource: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing 

Monthly Cost of using GA4 BigQuery.

Your monthly cost of using BigQuery for GA4 will depend on the following two factors:

1. The amount of data you stored in BigQuery (i.e the storage cost)
2. The amount of data you processed by each query you run (i.e. the query cost)

The first 10 GB of active storage is free each month. After that, you would be charged $0.020 per GB of active storage.

The first 1 terabyte of data processed is free each month. After that, you would be charged $5 per terabyte (TB) of data processed.

Google Analytics 4 comes with a free connection to BigQuery.

So you won’t need a third-party solution just to connect your GA4 property with your BigQuery project.

However, you could still be charged based on your data storage and processing.

As long as you remain within 10 GB of data storage and one terabyte of queries per month limit, your credit card will not be charged.

Once you exceed this free usage limit, only then your credit card will be charged.

Note: If you start querying terabytes or petabytes of data every day in BigQuery, then you need to be mentally and financially prepared to pay a considerable amount of storage and/or processing fees each month.

This is what we were paying when we were querying a lot of data in BigQuery:

Related Article: Guide to BigQuery Cost Optimization.