UK-based Google Cloud customers will no longer have to pay data transfer fees when shifting data between competing cloud environments, following the launch of the search engine giant’s Data Transfer Essentials service.
The launch, announced in a blog post by Jeanette Manfra, senior director of global risk and compliance at Google Cloud, comes several days ahead of the EU Data Act becoming applicable to all EU member states from 12 September 2025.
“Built in response to the principles of cloud interoperability and choice outlined in the EU Data Act, Data Transfer Essentials is a new, simple solution for data transfers between Google Cloud and other cloud service providers,” said Manfra. “Although the act allows cloud providers to pass through costs to customers, Data Transfer Essentials is available today at no cost to customers.”
The EU Data Act is intended to reshape how the EU cloud services market operates by ensuring cloud providers remove any contractual, commercial, organisational and interoperability barriers that prevent customers from switching providers, for example. It will also introduce a requirement in January 2027 that prohibits providers from charging customers data egress or switching fees.
Incidentally, Google became the first cloud provider in January 2024 to stop charging customers egress fees when transferring their data out of its cloud when switching to a new provider. It described the move at the time as a show of its commitment to supporting the development of a “thriving cloud ecosystem” that is “open, secure and interoperable”.
While the UK is not directly affected by the introduction of the act, Google has said its Data Transfer Essentials service means customers in the UK and Europe will benefit from not having to pay data transfer fees when operating multicloud deployments.
For this reason, Manfra said the service will enable customers to expand their multi-cloud deployments by making it more cost-effective to shift data between multiple providers, and – in turn – boost the resiliency of their setups.
“The original promise of the cloud is one that is open, elastic and free from artificial lock-ins,” added Manfra. “Google Cloud continues to embrace this openness and the ability for customers to choose the cloud service provider that works best for their workload needs.”
When Google first announced that it was cutting egress fees for its cloud customers in January 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it was doing the same in March of that year.
One week after AWS confirmed its plans to scrap egress fees, Microsoft also followed suit by announcing the same deal for customers that wanted to exit its public cloud platform Azure.
This time around, however, it seems Google is the only one of the big three cloud providers that is opting to eliminate the fees associated with transferring data between its cloud platform and those offered by its competitors.
On this point, Microsoft published an article on its cloud billing and subscription pages on 9 September 2025 confirming that EU-based Azure users will now benefit from “at cost” pricing for data transfers between other “data processing service providers”.
Meanwhile, AWS has stipulated that EU customers “may request” reduced data transfer rates for eligible use cases in line with the European Data Act on its Amazon EC2 pricing page.
