Do you need BigQuery? A simple guide for small businesses

Choosing tools18 October 20262 min read

What BigQuery is

BigQuery is Google's cloud data warehouse. It stores large amounts of data and lets you run fast queries on it. Dashboards in Looker Studio, Power BI and Tableau can all read from it.

Three ways to get data into a dashboard

1. Direct import. The dashboard tool connects straight to the platform. Nothing extra to store or pay for. This works well for Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 and Google Sheets.
2. A connector tool. Where the dashboard has no direct link, a third-party connector imports the data into the dashboard or into Google Sheets.
3. A cloud warehouse such as BigQuery. Data is loaded into storage first, then the dashboard reads from there.

Signs you may need BigQuery

• Your dashboard is slow because the data behind it is large, such as years of orders, ad clicks or web events.
• You need to join several big sources, such as orders, ads and web events, into one set of numbers.
• You want to keep history for longer than a platform stores it. Google Analytics 4, for example, limits how long it keeps event-level data in its own reports, while a BigQuery export lets you keep the raw events.
• Several dashboards use the same cleaned data, and you want it calculated once.

Why not start there anyway?

BigQuery is billed for storage and for the data your queries read. Small set-ups can cost very little, but the bill grows with your data and how often it is queried. A cloud set-up also needs someone to look after it.

That is why we recommend the lightest set-up that works. You can always move up when the volume needs it, and the dashboards you built carry over.

A simple rule

• Under a few thousand rows a day and a handful of sources: direct import or a connector tool.
• Slow dashboards, long history or heavy joins: look at BigQuery.

Want a straight answer for your own data? See how we store your data or ask us.

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