BigTable is a high-end service that is blazingly fast and geared to very large data sizes (in the order of hundreds of TB or even PB). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that BigTable is expensive. Even at the small end, with a data size of 3 TB (that's three nodes, each with 1 TB), the cost is a considerable $1,597/month. If we scale up a bit to 20 nodes, our bill rises to more than $10,000/month. BigTable clusters definitely need to be taken down when not in use, you should brace yourself for unpleasant billing surprises: