Getting Started with GCP Free Tier for Data Engineering

 🚀 Getting Started with GCP Free Tier for Data Engineering

📌 Step 1: Sign Up for GCP Free Tier

Go to the GCP Free Tier Sign-Up Page


Click "Get started for free"


Sign in with your Google account


Add basic details and billing information

(you won't be charged unless you upgrade)


🎁 Free Tier Includes:

$300 credits for 90 days (use on most GCP services)


Always-free usage limits on select services (even after credits expire)


💡 Step 2: Understand Key GCP Services for Data Engineering


Service Purpose Free Tier

BigQuery Data warehouse for analytics 1 TB of queries/month, 10 GB storage

Cloud Storage Object storage for files, backups 5 GB/month (US region)

Cloud Pub/Sub Messaging and event ingestion 10 GB/month

Dataflow Stream/batch processing (Apache Beam) Use with free credits

Cloud Functions Serverless functions (data triggers) 2 million invocations/month

Cloud Composer Workflow orchestration (Airflow) Free with credits (not always-free)

🛠️ Step 3: Set Up Your First Project

Go to Google Cloud Console


Click on the dropdown at the top and choose "New Project"


Name your project (e.g., data-engineering-demo)


Click Create


🧰 Step 4: Enable Key APIs

Go to APIs & Services > Library in the console and enable:


BigQuery API


Cloud Storage API


Cloud Pub/Sub API


Dataflow API (optional)


Cloud Functions API


☁️ Step 5: Use Cloud Storage for Your Data

Go to Storage > Browser


Click Create bucket


Choose a globally unique name (e.g., my-data-bucket-123)


Select default settings (choose US region for free tier)


Now you can upload files like CSVs, JSON, etc.


📊 Step 6: Load and Query Data in BigQuery

Go to BigQuery in the Cloud Console


Create a dataset (e.g., my_dataset)


Click Create Table


Choose Upload if uploading from your local machine


Select format (CSV, JSON, etc.)


Provide schema or use auto-detect


Once loaded, run SQL queries in the Query Editor


sql

Copy

Edit

SELECT * FROM `my_project.my_dataset.my_table` LIMIT 10;

🪄 Optional: Try Cloud Functions + Pub/Sub

Example use case: automatically trigger a function when a file is uploaded to Cloud Storage.


🔐 Bonus: Set Up IAM & Billing Alerts

Go to IAM & Admin > IAM to manage access


Set budget alerts in Billing > Budgets & alerts to avoid unexpected charges


✅ Summary

You're now ready to start building data pipelines on GCP using the free tier!


Key Things You Can Do:

Store files in Cloud Storage


Load and analyze data using BigQuery


Process data streams using Pub/Sub


Automate workflows using Cloud Functions

Learn Google Cloud Data Engineering Course

Read More

Key Skills Every GCP Data Engineer Should Learn

Overview of GCP Data Engineering Services: BigQuery, Dataflow, and More

Visit Our Quality Thought Training in Hyderabad

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