BigQuery public datasets

A public dataset is any dataset that is stored in BigQuery andmade available to the general public through theGoogle Cloud Public Dataset Program.The public datasets are datasets that BigQuery hosts foryou to access and integrate into your applications. Google pays for the storageof these datasets and provides public access to the data using aproject. You pay only for the queriesthat you perform on the data. The first 1 TB per month is free, subject toquery pricing details.

Public datasets are available for you to analyze using either legacy SQL orGoogleSQLqueries. Use a fully qualified table name when querying public datasets, forexamplebigquery-public-data.bbc_news.fulltext. If your organization restrictsdata access, for example with security perimeters, then you might need tocontact your administrator for permission to access public datasets.

You can access BigQuerypublic datasets by using theGoogle Cloud console,by using thebq command-line tool, or bymaking calls to theBigQuery REST APIusing a variety ofclient librariessuch asJava,.NET,orPython.You can alsoview and query public datasets through BigQuery sharing (formerly Analytics Hub),a data exchange platform that helps you discover and access data libraries.

Public datasets are not accessible by default from within aVPC Service Controls perimeter. Thereis no service-level agreement (SLA) for the Public Dataset Program.

Go to Sharing (Analytics Hub)

You can find more details about each individual datasetby clicking the dataset's name in the Datasets section ofCloud Marketplace.

Go to Datasets in Cloud Marketplace

Note: TheLast Updated date on a Cloud Marketplace dataset pageindicates when the dataset page was last updated. To find out when the dataitself was last updated, seeAccessing public datasets in the Google Cloud console.

Before you begin

To get started using a BigQuery public dataset, you must create or select a project. The first terabyte of data processed per month is free, so you can start querying public datasets without enabling billing. If you intend to go beyond thefree tier, you must also enable billing.

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains theresourcemanager.projects.create permission.Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains theresourcemanager.projects.create permission.Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

1. BigQuery is automatically enabled in new projects. To activate BigQuery in a preexisting project,

   Enable the BigQuery API.

   Roles required to enable APIs

   To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains theserviceusage.services.enable permission.Learn how to grant roles.

   Enable the API

Public dataset locations

Each public dataset is stored in a specific location likeUS orEU. Currently, the BigQuery sample tables are stored in theUS multi-regionlocation.When you query a sample table, supply the--location=US flag on thecommand line, chooseUS as the processing location in theGoogle Cloud console, or specify thelocation property in thejobReference section of thejob resourcewhen you use the API. Because the sample tables are stored in the US, you cannotwrite sample table query results to a table in another region, and you cannotjoin sample tables with tables in another region.

Access public datasets in the Google Cloud console

You can access public datasets in theGoogle Cloud console through the following methods:

• In theExplorer pane,view thebigquery-public-data project. For more information, seeOpen a public dataset.

• Use Sharing toview and subscribe to publicdatasets.

To find out when a data table was last updated, go to the table'sDetailssection as described inGet information about tables, andview theLast modified field.

Other public datasets

There are many other public datasets available for you to query, some of whichare also hosted by Google, but many more that are hosted by third parties. Otherdatasets include:

• NIH chest x-ray dataset
• The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) dataset
• Dataset of release notes for the majority of generally available Google Cloud products.

Share a dataset with the public

You can share any of your datasets with the public by changing the dataset'saccess controls to allow access by "All Authenticated Users". For moreinformation about setting dataset access controls, seeControlling access to datasets.

When you share a dataset with the public:

• Storage charges are incurred by the billing account attached to the projectthat contains the publicly-shared dataset.
• Query charges are incurred by the billing account attached to the projectwhere the query jobs are run.

For more information, seeOverview of BigQuery pricing.

Sample tables

In addition to thepublic datasets,BigQuery provides a limited number of sample tables that you canquery. These tables are contained in thebigquery-public-data:samples dataset.

The requirements for querying the BigQuery sample tables are thesame as the requirements for querying the public datasets.

Thebigquery-public-data:samples dataset includes the following tables:

Name	Description
gsod	Contains weather information collected by NOAA, such as precipitation amounts and wind speeds from late 1929 to early 2010.
github_nested	Contains a timeline of actions such as pull requests and comments on GitHub repositories with a nested schema. Created in September 2012.
github_timeline	Contains a timeline of actions such as pull requests and comments on GitHub repositories with a flat schema. Created in May 2012.
natality	Describes all United States births registered in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and New York City from 1969 to 2008.
shakespeare	Contains a word index of the works of Shakespeare, giving the number of times each word appears in each corpus.
trigrams	Contains English language trigrams from a sample of works published between 1520 and 2008.
wikipedia	Contains the complete revision history for all Wikipedia articles up to April 2010.

Contact us

If you have any questions about the BigQuery public datasetprogram, contact us atbq-public-data@google.com.

What's next

Learn how to query a table in a public dataset atQuickstart using the Google Cloud console.