You can be billed for data storage in either logical or physical (compressed) bytes, or a combination of both. By default, when creating a dataset in BigQuery, the unit of consumption for storage billing is logical bytes. In 2023, BigQuery introduced Logical Bytes Storage Billing to save costs:

• Logical Bytes Storage Billing
  • By default
• Physical Bytes Storage Billing
  • Introduced in July 2023
  • Can reduce up to x8 storage costs
  • Introduces billing for BigQuery data retention with time travel and fail-safe.