5-Year Storage Cost Forecast

20 TB/day, fixed. What does 2026–2031 cost?

20 TB/day lands in BigQuery for hot analytics. After 6 months it moves to GCS Standard; after 12 months total it moves to Archive permanently. Three tiers — three price points — modelled over 72 months.

Months 1–6: Standard only — data accumulates

Month 7–12: Archive begins — both tiers active

Month 13–60: Standard flat, Archive cumulates at fixed rate

Daily ingestion (fixed)

20 TB

per day

Month 1 storage

~450 TB

first 30 days

Year 6 monthly bill

—

all tiers

6-year total spend

—

Standard + Archive

Month 1 cost

—

Standard only

Month 72 cost

—

Standard + Archive

6-year total

—

all tiers combined

Saves vs all-in-BigQuery

—

vs keeping all data in BQ forever

Annual cost — 2026 to 2031

BigQuery

GCS Standard

GCS Archive

Egress

Storage lifecycle phases

Months 1–6

Months 7–12

Months 13–72

M1M6M12M24M36M48M60M72

Phase 1 — BigQuery only (M1–M6)

All data lands in BigQuery (Capacitor columnar format). The BQ window fills month by month. No GCS data yet — Standard and Archive costs are zero.

Phase 2 — BQ + GCS Standard (M7–M12)

Oldest BQ data moves to GCS Standard (Parquet). BQ stays full at its window size. Standard fills up while Archive is still empty.

Phase 3 — All 3 tiers active (M13–M72)

BQ flat · Standard flat · Archive grows linearly. Archive adds one month of data per month permanently. Archive cost overtakes BQ + Standard cost around Year 4.

Monthly cost over 72 months

Tiering saves (6yr)

—

vs keeping all data in BigQuery

BigQuery cost (6yr)

—

BQ tier spend (6yr)

Archive cost (6yr)

—

cumulative GCS Archive spend

Month-by-month breakdown (72 months)