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 can use $300 in free credits to try Cloud Storage.

Looking for something else? Check out personal, team, and block storage options.

Features

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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

Standard storage

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.

Nearline storage

Low cost, highly durable storage service for storing infrequently accessed data.

Data that can be stored for 30 days.

Coldline Storage

A very low cost, highly durable storage service for storing infrequently accessed data.

Data that can be stored for 90 days.

Archival storage

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.

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.

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

    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

      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

      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

      Plug into world class machine learning and AI tools

      Once your data is stored in Cloud Storage, take advantage of our options for training deep learning and machine learning models cost-effectively.
      Learn about our AI Infrastructure

      Plug into world class machine learning and AI tools

      Once your data is stored in Cloud Storage, take advantage of our options for training deep learning and machine learning models cost-effectively.
      Learn about our AI Infrastructure

      Host a website

      Hosting a static website with Cloud Storage

      If you have a web app that needs to serve static content or user-uploaded static media, using Cloud Storage can be a cost-effective and efficient way to host and serve this content, while reducing the amount of dynamic requests to your web app.
      Learn how to host a website with Cloud Storage

      Hosting a static website with Cloud Storage

      If you have a web app that needs to serve static content or user-uploaded static media, using Cloud Storage can be a cost-effective and efficient way to host and serve this content, while reducing the amount of dynamic requests to your web app.
      Learn how to host a website with Cloud Storage

      Pricing

      How Cloud Storage pricing worksPricing for Cloud Storage services is based on storage class (location and operation fees apply), network egress, and network usage.
      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

      Archival Storage

      Best for data archiving, online backup, and disaster recovery.

      Starting at

      $.0012

      per GiB per month

      Network egress and special service rates

      Network egress 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 based on storage class