Using the BigQuery sandbox

The BigQuery sandbox lets you explore BigQuery capabilities at no cost and confirm that it fits your needs. The sandbox lets you experience BigQuery and the Cloud Console without providing a credit card, creating a billing account, or enabling billing for your project.

The Cloud Console is the graphical interface that you can use to create and manage BigQuery resources and to run SQL queries. If you're new to the Cloud Console, see the Cloud Console quickstart to learn how to query a public dataset and load sample data into BigQuery by using the Cloud Console.

Getting started with the sandbox

The BigQuery sandbox is available to anyone with a Google account. If you are a current Firebase user, see Link BigQuery to Firebase in the Firebase Help for instructions on linking Firebase to BigQuery.

To open the BigQuery sandbox:

  1. In the Cloud Console, open the BigQuery page.

    Go to BigQuery

    You can also open BigQuery in the Cloud Console by entering the following URL in your browser.

  2. Authenticate with your Google account, or create one if you haven't already.

  3. Accept the terms of service.

  4. Before you can use the BigQuery sandbox, you must create a project. Follow the prompts to create your new project.

  5. After you create your project, the Cloud Console displays a sandbox banner like the following.

    Cloud Console sandbox.

While you're using the sandbox, you do not need to create a billing account, and you do not need to attach a billing account to the project.


The BigQuery sandbox is subject to the following limits.

To remove the sandbox limits, you can upgrade your project and then remove or update the expiration time for your resources. After you upgrade from the sandbox, you can still use the free tier, but you can generate charges. To manage BigQuery quotas, consider setting up cost controls.

Upgrading from the sandbox

To upgrade from the BigQuery sandbox:

  1. Enable billing for your project.
  2. Update your BigQuery resources:

    1. Remove or update the dataset's default table expiration.
    2. Remove or update the dataset's default partition expiration.
    3. Remove or update the expiration time for your tables.
    4. Remove or update the expiration time for your views.
    5. Remove or update the expiration time for your table partitions.

Troubleshooting the sandbox

If your tables have expired, you can recover them within 48 hours. For more information, see Restoring a deleted table.

You can also view information on your sandbox resources by using the audit logs. Audit logs show details including whether a resource was created using the sandbox and when resources automatically expired.

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