This page explains the concept of bucket location and the different locations where you can create buckets. When you create a bucket, you permanently define its geographic location, which is the physical place where object data in the bucket resides.
To learn how to set the location for your bucket, see Creating Storage Buckets.
To learn how to move your data to a new location, see Moving and Renaming Buckets.
Key concepts
You specify a location for storing your object data when you create a bucket.
You can select from the following location types:
A region is a specific geographic place, such as São Paulo.
A dual-region is a specific pair of regions, such as Tokyo and Osaka.
A multi-region is a large geographic area, such as the United States, that contains two or more geographic places.
Objects stored in a multi-region or dual-region are geo-redundant. You can choose how quickly you want your data to be geo-redundant:
Default replication asynchronously replicates newly written Cloud Storage objects to a separate region. While most objects are replicated within minutes, some larger objects can take longer.
Turbo replication asynchronously replicates newly written Cloud Storage objects to a separate region within a target of 15 minutes. Applicable only for dual-region buckets.
Cloud Storage stores object data in the selected location in accordance with the Service Specific Terms.
Location considerations
A good location balances latency, availability, and bandwidth costs for data consumers.
Use a region to help optimize latency and network bandwidth for data consumers, such as analytics pipelines, that are grouped in the same region.
Use a dual-region when you want similar performance advantages as regions, but also want the higher availability that comes with being geo-redundant.
- Use turbo replication when you want a shorter, more predictable recovery point objective (RPO). This feature is designed to asynchronously replicate newly written and rewritten Cloud Storage objects to a separate region within a target of 15 minutes.
Use a multi-region when you want to serve content to data consumers that are outside of the Google network and distributed across large geographic areas, or when you want the higher availability that comes with being geo-redundant.
Generally, you should store your data in a location that is convenient or contains the majority of the users of your data.
See the data storage pricing table for storage costs in each location.
Compute Engine VM notes
- Storing data in the same region as your Compute Engine VM instances can provide better performance. This advantage applies to both regions and dual-regions.
- While you can't specify a Compute Engine zone as a bucket location, all Compute Engine VM instances in zones within a given region have similar performance when accessing buckets in that region.
Available locations
The following sections list the Cloud Storage locations available for storing your data.
Regions
All regions are at least 100 miles apart.
| Continent | Region Name | Region Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | |||
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST1 |
Montréal |
 Low CO2
|
|
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2 |
Toronto |
Low CO2
|
|
US-CENTRAL1 |
Iowa |
Low CO2
|
|
US-EAST1 |
South Carolina | ||
US-EAST4 |
Northern Virginia | ||
US-WEST1 |
Oregon |
Low CO2 |
|
US-WEST2 |
Los Angeles | ||
US-WEST3 |
Salt Lake City | ||
US-WEST4 |
Las Vegas | ||
| South America | |||
SOUTHAMERICA-EAST1 |
São Paulo |
Low CO2
|
|
SOUTHAMERICA-WEST1 |
Santiago | ||
| Europe | |||
EUROPE-CENTRAL2 |
Warsaw | ||
EUROPE-NORTH1 |
Finland |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-WEST1 |
Belgium |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-WEST2 |
London | ||
EUROPE-WEST3 |
Frankfurt | ||
EUROPE-WEST4 |
Netherlands | ||
EUROPE-WEST6 |
Zürich |
Low CO2
|
|
| Asia | |||
ASIA-EAST1 |
Taiwan | ||
ASIA-EAST2 |
Hong Kong | ||
ASIA-NORTHEAST1 |
Tokyo | ||
ASIA-NORTHEAST2 |
Osaka | ||
ASIA-NORTHEAST3 |
Seoul | ||
ASIA-SOUTH1 |
Mumbai | ||
ASIA-SOUTH2 |
Delhi | ||
ASIA-SOUTHEAST1 |
Singapore | ||
ASIA-SOUTHEAST2 |
Jakarta | ||
| Australia | |||
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST1 |
Sydney | ||
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST2 |
Melbourne |
Multi-regions
| Multi-Region Name | Multi-Region Description |
|---|---|
ASIA |
Data centers in Asia |
EU |
Data centers within member states of the European Union1 |
US |
Data centers in the United States |
1 Object data added to a bucket in the EU multi-region is not
stored in the EUROPE-WEST2 (London) or EUROPE-WEST6 (Zurich) regions.
Dual-regions
| Dual-Region Name | Dual-Region Description |
|---|---|
ASIA1 |
ASIA-NORTHEAST1 and ASIA-NORTHEAST2. |
EUR4 |
EUROPE-NORTH1 and EUROPE-WEST4. |
NAM4 |
US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1. |
Alpha locations
us-central2— Central United States
What's next
- Create a bucket.
- Explore the storage classes available in Cloud Storage.
- Learn about Cloud Storage pricing.
- View all the Google Cloud services available in locations worldwide.
- Explore additional location-based concepts, such as zones, that apply to other Google Cloud services.
Try it for yourself
If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how Cloud Storage performs in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
Try Cloud Storage free