Right way to explore tables in BigQuery

This LinkedIn Post by Yingjun Wu ( link ) had show cased a ridiculous case of BigQuery pricing model.

BigQuery charges based on the amount of data referenced, not by the amount of data processed. This means that even you used a LIMIT keyword to limit the number of rows returned, BigQuery will still charge you the amount of data query referenced.

The right way to explore tables in BigQuery is to use TABLESAMPLE clause to sample the data. In this way BigQuery will only charge you based on the sampled data.

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SELECT * FROM dataset.my_table TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM (10 PERCENT)

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