GA4 Data Retention and BigQuery Limits Explained
GA4 keeps event-level data for 2 or 14 months, and the free BigQuery export stops at 1 million events a day. Here is what to set and when to export.
Google Analytics 4 keeps event-level data for either 2 months or 14 months on a standard property, and the free daily BigQuery export is capped at 1 million events. If your history matters to you, change the retention setting today and start exporting to BigQuery before you need the data, because nothing is recovered afterwards.
Most founders discover this the hard way: they open an exploration in month fifteen and the early numbers are gone. Here is how the limits work and what we would set up.
How long does GA4 keep your data?
On a standard property, the data retention setting for event-level and user-level data offers two choices: 2 months or 14 months. Google's data retention documentation describes a monthly clean-up that removes data older than your chosen window.
The default is not the one you want. Open Admin, then Data collection and modification, then Data retention, and check what is selected. If it says 2 months, switch it to 14 months. It costs nothing and there is no reason to leave it short unless a privacy policy tells you to.
What actually disappears?
Explorations are the part that suffers. Google states that an exploration cannot show data beyond your retention window. Set retention to 14 months, pick a date range of 14 months plus one day, and that extra day will be empty.
That means year-over-year comparisons inside Explorations stop working once the older year ages out. If you need to compare this November with last November, you need your own copy of the data.
What changes on large properties?
When a standard property becomes a Large property, Google automatically reduces event-level retention to 2 months. Analytics 360 properties allow up to 50 months. Most small SaaS products and online stores will never reach Large, but it is worth knowing if you run a high-traffic content site.
What does the free BigQuery export give you?
GA4 can send raw events to Google BigQuery, a warehouse where you query the data with SQL. This is the only reliable way to keep history past the retention window, and it lets you join analytics with billing or CRM data.
There are two modes:
- Daily (batch) export. One load per day. Standard properties are limited to 1 million events per day.
- Streaming export. Events arrive continuously. Google lists no event cap for it, but describes it as best-effort, so it may contain gaps. BigQuery storage and query costs are billed to your Google Cloud project.
The limit that bites is the daily one. According to Google's BigQuery Export documentation, if your property consistently goes over 1 million events, the daily export is paused and earlier days are not reprocessed. So a busy launch week can leave holes in your archive.
How do you stay under the cap?
Count first. In Reports, check your daily event count for a normal week and a peak week. If peaks are near 1 million, act before the next campaign.
Three practical moves:
- Exclude events you never analyze. Google suggests event exclusion and data-stream export settings as ways to lower the daily volume. Scroll and noisy custom events are the usual suspects.
- Export only the streams you need. If you have separate web and app streams, you can export one without the other.
- Turn on streaming. If you pass the cap and your cloud budget allows it, streaming has no event limit, with the best-effort caveat above.
Do not wait for the warning. Once days are skipped, they stay skipped.
A setup we would use
For a small product or store, this takes about twenty minutes:
- Set retention to 14 months.
- Create a Google Cloud project and link BigQuery from Admin, Product links.
- Start with the daily export and exclude low-value events.
- Add a calendar reminder to look at the daily event count after every major launch.
- Note the link date. Data only flows from that day forward.
If you also want to see how people reach you, our free SEO tools pair well with an exported dataset, and the Analytics & Data hub collects more setup guides.
FAQ
Can I recover GA4 data after it expires?
No. Once data passes the retention window, it is removed in the monthly process. Only a BigQuery export or another copy you made earlier keeps it.
Does the BigQuery export cost money?
The export from GA4 is free for standard properties within the 1 million event daily cap. BigQuery itself bills for storage and queries under your Google Cloud project, so check its pricing for your volume.
Is 14 months enough?
For month-to-month decisions, yes. For multi-year trends or cohort analysis, export to BigQuery and keep the raw events.
Does the export backfill old data?
Plan on it not doing so. Treat the day you link BigQuery as day one of your archive.
Your next step: open Data retention in Admin right now and look at the number. If it says 2 months, you have been losing history every month.
