Legacy capacity commitment plans

Note: Legacy reservations, including access to flat-rate billing or certain commitment lengths, are only available to allow-listed customers. To determine if you have access to these legacy features, contact your administrator.

BigQuery offers the following capacity commitment plans:

• Flex slots commitment
• Monthly commitment
• Annual commitment

The minimum commitment size is 100 slots, and commitments are available in 100-slot increments, up to your slot quota. There is no limit on the number of commitments that you can create. You are charged from the moment your commitment purchase is successful. For information about BigQuery costs, see BigQuery pricing.

Note: Customers who use on-demand billing typically have 2000 slots or more available for query processing. Allocating 100 slots might reduce the query performance.

To learn more about capacity commitments and reservations, see Introduction to reservations.

Purchasing a capacity commitment is optional when purchasing slots associated with BigQuery editions, but can save on costs.

Flex slots commitment plans

Flex slots are a way to purchase BigQuery capacity for 60 seconds. When you purchase a flex slots commitment, you can delete the commitment 60 seconds after the commitment becomes active. This service bills by the second. You can convert a flex slots commitment plan to a monthly or an annual commitment plan.

For example, if you purchase a commitment at 6:00 PM, you start being charged at that second. You can delete the commitment after 6:01 PM, 60 seconds after the commitment begins; this results in 60 seconds of billed usage. You are billed for each second the commitment is active.

Monthly commitment plans

Note: Support for monthly commitments ended in August, 2023, when monthly commitments were converted to either annual commitments or baseline slots. For more information about commitments and renewal, see Renew commitments.

Annual commitment plans

With an annual commitment plan, you pay for the specified number of slots for one year, and for each second thereafter. After the expiration of the plan, you can delete the commitment at any time, or continue to pay based on the conditions of the renewal plan.

A renewal plan is the capacity commitment plan that takes effect after an annual commitment expires.

Renew annual commitments

You select a renewal plan when you purchase an annual commitment plan, or when you convert another commitment plan to an annual commitment. You can change the renewal plan for an annual commitment at any time until it expires.

If you are on a flat-rate capacity model, you can renew the annual commitment plan before the plan expires to one of the following options:

• None. After 365 days, your plan expires and doesn't renew.
• Monthly. After 365 days, your commitment converts to a monthly commitment. You are charged at the monthly rate, and you can delete the commitment after 30 days.
• Flex. After 365 days, your commitment converts to a flex slots commitment. You are charged at the flex slots rate, and you can delete the commitment at any time.
• Annual. After 365 days, your commitment renews for another year.

Note: Starting on July 5, 2023, BigQuery customers will no longer be able to purchase flat-rate annual, flat-rate monthly, and flex slots commitments. For more information, see BigQuery pricing.

If you are on an autoscaling capacity model, you can renew the annual commitment plan. For information about purchasing and renewing commitments, see Create a capacity commitment.

For example, suppose you purchased an annual commitment at 6:00 PM on October 5, 2019. You start being charged at that second. You can delete or renew the commitment after 6:00 PM on October 4, 2020, noting that 2020 is a leap year. You can change the renewal plans prior to 6:00 PM on October 4, 2020 as follows:

• If you choose to renew to a monthly commitment, then at 6:00 PM on October 4, 2020, your commitment converts into a monthly commitment. You are charged at the monthly commitment rate, and you cannot delete the commitment for 30 days after the monthly renewal plan.

• If you choose to renew to a flex slots commitment, then at 6:00 PM on October 4, 2020, your commitment converts into a flex slots commitment. You are charged at the flex slots rate and you can delete the commitment after 60 seconds.

• If you choose to renew annually, then at 6:00 PM on October 4, 2020, your commitment renews for another year.

Delete commitments

After you create a commitment, you can delete it only after the commitment expires.

To delete an annual commitment, set its renewal plan to flex slots. After the annual commitment expires and is renewed as a flex slots commitment, you can delete it.

For detailed instructions on how to delete a commitment, see Delete a commitment.

If you accidentally purchased a commitment or made a mistake when you configured your commitment, contact Cloud Billing Support for help.

What's next

• Learn about reservations, its limitations, quotas, and pricing.
• Learn about slots.
• Learn how to purchase and manage slot capacity.
• Learn about BigQuery editions.