Cloud Storage | Google Cloud

archived 6 Feb 2025 04:18:55 UTC
Cloud Storage product icon

Cloud Storage

Object storage for companies of all sizes

Cloud Storage is a managed service for storing unstructured data. Store any amount of data and retrieve it as often as you like.
New customers get $300 in free credits to try Cloud Storage and other Google Cloud products.
Looking for something else? Check out personal, team, and block storage options.
Features

Leading analytics and ML/AI tools

Once your data is stored in Cloud Storage, easily plug into Google Cloud’s powerful tools to create your data warehouse with BigQuery, run open source analytics with Dataproc, or build and deploy machine learning (ML) models with Vertex AI. 

Automatic storage class transitions

With features like Object Lifecycle Management (OLM) and Autoclass you can easily optimize costs with object placement across storage classes. You can enable, at the bucket level, policy-based automatic object movement to colder storage classes based on the last access time. There are no early deletion or retrieval fees, nor class transition charges for object access in colder storage classes. 

Continental-scale and SLA-backed replication

Industry leading dual-region buckets support an expansive number of regions. A single, continental-scale bucket offers nine regions across three continents, providing a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of zero. In the event of an outage, applications seamlessly access the data in the alternate region. There is no failover and failback process. For organizations requiring ultra availability, turbo replication with dual-region buckets offers a 15 minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) SLA. 

Use Cloud Storage as a local filesystem

Cloud Storage is a common choice for storing training data, models, and checkpoints for machine learning projects in Cloud Storage buckets. With Cloud Storage FUSE, you can take advantage of the scale, affordability, throughput, and simplicity that Cloud Storage provides, while maintaining compatibility with applications that use or require filesystem semantics. Cloud Storage FUSE also now offers caching, which provides up to 2.2x faster time to train and 2.9x higher training throughput, compared to native ML framework dataloaders.

Manage your object storage with file inventory reports

Inventory reports contain metadata information about your objects, such as the object's storage class, ETag, and content type. This information helps you analyze your storage costs, audit and validate your objects, and ensure data security and compliance. You can export inventory reports as comma-separated value (CSV) or Apache Parquet files so you can further analyze it using tools, such as BigQuery. Learn more about Storage Insights inventory reports.

Fast and flexible transfer services

Storage Transfer Service offers a highly performant, online pathway to Cloud Storage—both with the scalability and speed you need to simplify the data transfer process. For offline data transfer our Transfer Appliance is a shippable storage server that sits in your datacenter and then ships to an ingest location where the data is uploaded to Cloud Storage.

Default and configurable data security

Cloud Storage offers secure-by-design features to protect your data and advanced controls and capabilities to keep your data private and secure against leaks or compromises. Security features include access control policies, data encryption, retention policies, retention policy locks, and signed URLs.
Developer advocate discussing authentication controls

Object lifecycle management

Define conditions that trigger data deletion or transition to a cheaper storage class.

Object Versioning

Continue to store old copies of objects when they are deleted or overwritten.

Soft delete

Soft delete offers improved protection against accidental and malicious data deletion by providing you with a way to retain and restore recently deleted data.

Retention policies

Define minimum retention periods that objects must be stored for before they’re deletable.

Object holds

Place a hold on an object to prevent its deletion.

Customer-managed encryption keys

Encrypt object data with encryption keys stored by the Cloud Key Management Service and managed by you.

Customer-supplied encryption keys

Encrypt object data with encryption keys created and managed by you.

Uniform bucket-level access

Uniformly control access to your Cloud Storage resources by disabling object ACLs.

Requester pays

Require accessors of your data to include a project ID to bill for network charges, operation charges, and retrieval fees.

Bucket Lock

Bucket Lock allows you to configure a data retention policy for a Cloud Storage bucket that governs how long objects in the bucket must be retained.

Pub/Sub notifications for Cloud Storage

Send notifications to Pub/Sub when objects are created, updated, or deleted.

Cloud Audit Logs with Cloud Storage

Maintain admin activity logs and data access logs for your Cloud Storage resources.

Object- and bucket-level permissions

Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) allows you to control who has access to your buckets and objects.
Storage options
Storage typeDescriptionBest for
Storage for data that is frequently accessed ("hot" data) and/or stored for only brief periods of time.
"Hot" data, including websites, streaming videos, and mobile apps.
Low cost, highly durable storage service for storing infrequently accessed data.
Data that can be stored for 30 days.
A very low cost, highly durable storage service for storing infrequently accessed data.
Data that can be stored for 90 days.

The lowest cost, highly durable storage service for data archiving, online backup, and disaster recovery.
Data that can be stored for 365 days.
Learn more about storage classes.
Description
Storage for data that is frequently accessed ("hot" data) and/or stored for only brief periods of time.
Best for
"Hot" data, including websites, streaming videos, and mobile apps.
Description
Low cost, highly durable storage service for storing infrequently accessed data.
Best for
Data that can be stored for 30 days.
Description
A very low cost, highly durable storage service for storing infrequently accessed data.
Best for
Data that can be stored for 90 days.

Description
The lowest cost, highly durable storage service for data archiving, online backup, and disaster recovery.
Best for
Data that can be stored for 365 days.
Learn more about storage classes.
How It Works

To use Cloud Storage, you’ll first create a bucket, a basic container that holds your data in Cloud Storage. You’ll then upload objects into that bucket—where you can download, share, and manage objects.

Google Cloud drawing board. What is Cloud Storage?
What is Cloud Storage? (2:05)
Common Uses

Backups and archives

Use Cloud Storage for backup, archives, and recovery

Cloud Storage's nearline storage provides fast, low-cost, highly durable storage for data accessed less than once a month, reducing the cost of backups and archives while still retaining immediate access. Backup data in Cloud Storage can be used for more than just recovery because all storage classes have ms latency and are accessed through a single API.
Learn more about nearline storage
Diagram

    Media content storage and delivery

    Store data to stream audio or video 

    Stream audio or video directly to apps or websites with Cloud Storage’s geo-redundant capabilities. Geo-redundant storage with the highest level of availability and performance is ideal for low-latency, high-QPS content serving to users distributed across geographic regions.
    Learn more about geo-redundant storage
    Diagram

    Unlock infinite capacity and innovation

    Cloud Storage’s multi-regional performance and availability powers the world’s biggest media and entertainment companies.

    Data lakes and big data analytics

    Create a data lake for analytics

    Develop and deploy data pipelines and storage to analyze large amounts of data. Cloud Storage offers high availability and performance while being strongly consistent, giving you confidence and accuracy in analytics workloads.
    Learn more about data lakes using Cloud Storage
    Diagram

    Machine learning and AI

    Deploy an AI summarization solution in the Google Cloud console

    Launch a Google-recommended, preconfigured solution that uses generative AI to quickly extract text and summarize large documents stored in Cloud Storage.
    Deploy in console

    Host a website

    Build, host, and run dynamic websites in the Google Cloud console

    Launch a sample drop-ship retail product website that’s publicly accessible and customizable, leveraging Python and JavaScript.
    Deploy in console
    Pricing
    How Cloud Storage pricing worksPricing for Cloud Storage services is primarily based on location and storage class. Additional usage-based data processing and data transfer charges may also apply.
    Service usage and typeDescriptionPrice (USD)
    Always Free usage
    All customers get 5 GiB of US regional storage free per month, not charged against your credits. Learn more about Always Free limits.
    Free
    Storage class
    Standard storage
    Best for frequently accessed ("hot" data) and/or stored for only brief periods of time.
    Starting at
    $.02
    per GiB per month
    Nearline storage
    Best for service for storing infrequently accessed data.
    Starting at
    $.01
    per GiB per month
    Coldline storage
    Best for storing infrequently accessed data.
    Starting at
    $.004
    per GiB per month
    Archive storage
    Best for data archiving, online backup, and disaster recovery.
    Starting at
    $.0012
    per GiB per month
    Data transfer and special network service rates
    Data transfer within Google Cloud
    Applies when moving, copying, accessing data in Cloud Storage or between Google Cloud services.

    Check your network product for pricing information.

    General network usage

    General network usage applies for any data that does not fall into one of the above categories or the Always Free usage limits.

    Ranges from
    $0.12-$0.20
    based on monthly usage
    Learn more about Cloud Storage pricing. View all pricing details.
    How Cloud Storage pricing works
    Pricing for Cloud Storage services is primarily based on location and storage class. Additional usage-based data processing and data transfer charges may also apply.
    Always Free usage
    Description
    All customers get 5 GiB of US regional storage free per month, not charged against your credits. Learn more about Always Free limits.
    Price (USD)
    Free
    Storage class
    Description
    Standard storage
    Best for frequently accessed ("hot" data) and/or stored for only brief periods of time.
    Price (USD)
    Starting at
    $.02
    per GiB per month
    Nearline storage
    Best for service for storing infrequently accessed data.
    Description
    Starting at
    $.01
    per GiB per month
    Coldline storage
    Best for storing infrequently accessed data.
    Description
    Starting at
    $.004
    per GiB per month
    Archive storage
    Best for data archiving, online backup, and disaster recovery.
    Description
    Starting at
    $.0012
    per GiB per month
    Data transfer and special network service rates
    Description
    Data transfer within Google Cloud
    Applies when moving, copying, accessing data in Cloud Storage or between Google Cloud services.

    Price (USD)
    Check your network product for pricing information.

    General network usage

    Description
    General network usage applies for any data that does not fall into one of the above categories or the Always Free usage limits.

    Price (USD)
    Ranges from
    $0.12-$0.20
    based on monthly usage
    Learn more about Cloud Storage pricing. View all pricing details.

    Pricing calculator

    Estimate your monthly Cloud Storage charges, including cluster management fees.

    Custom quote

    Connect with our sales team to get a custom quote for your organization.

    Start your proof of concept

    New customers get $300 in free credits to try Cloud Storage and other Google Cloud products

    Have a large project?

    Learn how to get started with Cloud Storage

    Introduction and best practices for Cloud Storage

    How to name buckets

    Business Case
    Explore how companies are using Cloud Storage
    vimeo logo
    Vimeo is delivering more high-quality videos than ever while reducing costs.
    Vimeo replaced its servers for accepting video uploads with Cloud Storage, fronted by the Fastly edge cloud to help ensure regional routing and low-latency, high-throughput connections for Vimeo’s publishers. Multi-regional Cloud Storage offers fast, resumable upload capability that helps make for better user experience.
    Read customer story
    Trusted by top retailers Target and Carrefour.

    Used by top financial institutions KeyBank, PayPal, and Commerzbank.

    Powering top autonomous vehicle companies Cruise and Nuro.

    • target logo
    • carrefour logo
    • key bank logo
    • paypal logo
    • commerzbank logo
    • cruise logo
    • nuro logo
    • anthropic
    FAQ

    Does Cloud Storage work for personal photos, videos, and files?

    keyboard_arrow_up
    No. For personal storage options, including photos, device backup, VPN, and more, visit Google One. 
    Other inquiries and support
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