What is BigQuery Data Transfer Service?

The BigQuery Data Transfer Service automates data movement into BigQuery on a scheduled, managed basis. Your analytics team can lay the foundation for a BigQuery data warehouse without writing a single line of code.

You can access the BigQuery Data Transfer Service using the:

After you configure a data transfer, the BigQuery Data Transfer Service automatically loads data into BigQuery on a regular basis. You can also initiate data backfills to recover from any outages or gaps. You cannot use the BigQuery Data Transfer Service to transfer data out of BigQuery.

In addition to loading data into BigQuery, BigQuery Data Transfer Service is used for two BigQuery operations: dataset copies and scheduled queries.

Supported data sources

The BigQuery Data Transfer Service supports loading data from the following data sources:

Supported regions

Like BigQuery, the BigQuery Data Transfer Service is a multi-regional resource, with many additional single regions available.

A BigQuery dataset's locality is specified when you create a destination dataset to store the data transferred by the BigQuery Data Transfer Service. When you set up a transfer, the transfer configuration itself is set to the same location as the destination dataset. The BigQuery Data Transfer Service processes and stages data in the same location as the destination dataset.

The data you want to transfer to BigQuery can also have a region. In most cases, the region where your data is stored and the location of the destination dataset in BigQuery are irrelevant. In other kinds of transfers, the dataset and the source data must be colocated in the same region, or a compatible region.

For detailed information about transfers and region compatibility for BigQuery Data Transfer Service, see Dataset locations and transfers. For supported regions for BigQuery, see Dataset locations.

Pricing

For information on BigQuery Data Transfer Service pricing, see the Pricing page.

Once data is transferred to BigQuery, standard BigQuery storage and query pricing applies.

Quotas

For information on BigQuery Data Transfer Service quotas, see the Quotas and limits page.

What's next

To learn how to create a transfer, see the documentation for your data source.