GA4 Deletes Your Data After 14 Months. BigQuery Keeps It Forever — and the Link Is Free.
GA4's maximum data retention is 14 months. After that, your historical data disappears — no way to get it back. BigQuery gives you a permanent copy of every event GA4 collects, and Google's free tier (10GB storage + 1TB querying per month) covers most sites without ever charging a cent. This 10-step guide walks you through the entire setup.
MeasureU is trusted by 50,000+ digital marketers
PDF download — delivered instantly. No spam, ever.
MeasureU Has Been Featured In
Google Ads What's Inside
Permanent Data Storage
Every event GA4 collects gets exported to BigQuery automatically. No more losing historical data when GA4's 14-month window rolls past.
Free Tier That Covers Most Sites
10GB of storage and 1TB of querying per month at zero cost. The guide shows you how to stay within the free tier and set billing alerts just in case.
10-Step Setup Guide with Screenshots
From creating a Google Cloud project to running your first validation query. Every step has a screenshot so you know exactly what to click.
24 pages with screenshots. Works with the free Google Cloud tier.
GA4 has a hard limit: 14 months of data retention. After that, your event-level data is gone. You can't query it, you can't build audiences from it, and you can't run year-over-year comparisons. For most businesses, that means losing the data they need most right when they need it.
BigQuery solves this completely. Once linked, every event GA4 collects is automatically exported to your own BigQuery dataset — stored permanently, queryable with SQL, and covered by Google Cloud's free tier for the vast majority of websites.
- ✓ Never used Google Cloud before? Parts 2 through 5 walk you through creating a project, setting up a billing account, and configuring access — all from scratch, with screenshots for every screen.
- ✓ Worried about unexpected charges? Part 5 covers billing management and alerts. The free tier handles 10GB of storage and 1TB of queries per month — more than enough for most GA4 properties.
- ✓ Not sure if you actually need BigQuery? Part 1 walks through the specific scenarios where BigQuery matters: year-over-year reporting, custom attribution models, and raw event analysis that GA4's interface can't do.
- ✓ Want to verify the link is working? Part 9 includes a validation query you can run immediately to confirm data is flowing from GA4 into BigQuery correctly.
- ✓ Concerned about table storage growing forever? Part 10 covers table expiration settings so you can control how long BigQuery keeps your data and avoid any storage surprises down the road.
Instant access. No credit card.
Built by a Team That Lives in GA4 Data Every Day
Jeff Sauer has been working in digital analytics since 2005 and has trained 50,000+ marketers through MeasureU. His team uses BigQuery daily for client reporting and analysis. This guide is the same setup process they follow when onboarding a new GA4 property — written so anyone can follow it, regardless of technical background.
Your GA4 data has a 14-month expiration date. BigQuery removes it.
Download the guide, follow the 10 steps, and have permanent access to every event GA4 collects. Most people finish the setup in under an hour.