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
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.
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.
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 type | Description | Best 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.
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.
Common Uses