$5K per Query? Solana Devs Slam BigQuery for Shocking Fees

$5,000 per Query? Solana Devs Slam Google Cloud's BigQuery for Shocking Fees

Written by Aaron S.,

Editor-In-Chief

Last Updated: August 27, 2025

Key Takeaways

A Solana developer received an $18,000 bill from BigQuery after running just three queries, later reduced to $4,000 each after support stepped in;
Developers said BigQuery lacks spending limits, which makes it easy to incur huge costs due to errors such as infinite loops or large data scans;
Another user was charged $5,000 for a single query that scanned terabytes of Solana data, but secured a refund through local Google support.

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Several developers using Google Cloud’s BigQuery to work with the Solana SOL $201.05 blockchain data have reported unusually high charges for basic queries.

According to an August 26 post on X reshared by Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of Trading Strategy, a pseudonymous developer warned others after facing an $18,000 monthly bill.

They explained that each of the three queries they ran cost over $5,000. Although support later reduced those charges to about $4,000 each, the situation raised concerns across the developer community.

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Another pseudonymous developer shared a similar experience. They stated that a single query intended to access a Solana table scanned multiple terabytes of data, which resulted in a $5,000 charge. Fortunately, the issue was escalated and resolved with help from local Google contacts, and a refund was issued.

A common complaint was the lack of tools to prevent runaway costs. Ermin Nurovic, co-founder of Flat Money, noted that the service does not impose hard spending limits. He gave the example of a cloud function running in a loop, which potentially causes serious charges without warning.

Google Cloud’s BigQuery is a managed service that enables users to analyze large datasets using SQL. It was integrated with Solana in October 2023, which offers easier access to historical on-chain data, such as non-fungible token (NFT) sales or large token transfers.

Meanwhile, Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Helius, noted that Solana recently experienced a brief spike in network activity. What did he say? Read the full story.