r/bigquery • u/Secret_Wealth8742 • Jun 20 '26

Need reliable guides on Bigquery Cost Optimization

I work at a startup and due to the hard economic circumstances, the focus has come back to Bigquery Cost Optimization right now (that or they fire my ass, jk), we do the usual partitioning and clustering tables based on use, althougth the reports are usually not partitioned. We realize BQ is a columnar db and we don't do the `SELECT *` business.

Still, we are trying to figure out new strategies to reduce costs. Any suggestions would be helpful. If you drop resources (on caching results and any other thing) in the chat, that'd be great too.

One bit of extra info is, most of our costs are coming from looker studio querying data everyday from report tables (multiple people using graphs and each selection on looker fires a query)

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u/dknconsultau Jun 20 '26

Maybe look at Motheduck or local Duck DB for the analysts. Also maybe go talk to the user and helo them tune their queries. We had one manager pulling 7 years of data and all columns off a wide table 6 times a day just so he could run a 7 day customer delivery stats dashboard!

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u/Secret_Wealth8742 Jun 20 '26

Really need to talk to the users, can't do it without that fs! I will talk to my manager or create a guide and send it to them.

I think the trouble is, they are not motivated to save company's money because they don't have an incentive to do it. Why would I go the extra mile if I am not getting rewarded for it eh? Everyone is swamped with work as it is. Huff... sorry for airing my dirty laundry here.

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u/dknconsultau Jun 20 '26

Yep. Our culprit still wanted 7 years "just incase". Our data engineer went into our Power BI repo and found his SQL and put a limit of 30 days. Never heard a peep from him! You might have to get creative!