Google Cloud API endpoint overview

An API endpoint, or service endpoint, is a URL that specifies the network address of a Google Cloud API service, such as bigquery.googleapis.com. Google Cloud services allow access to resources using different types of API endpoints, including regional, multiregional, global, and locational. Support for each type of endpoint depends on the service.

This document briefly describes each type of endpoint to provide clarity about how they differ and guidance about which type of endpoint to use.

Regional endpoints

Regional API endpoints provide access to Google Cloud services through an API endpoint that is scoped to a single Google Cloud region. Traffic sent to a regional endpoint is processed and TLS terminated entirely within the specified region.

For most Google Cloud services, you can use regional endpoints to work with regional resources within the specified region. Operations on global resources, multiregional resources, and out-of-region regional resources are typically not supported from the regional endpoint.

Regional API endpoints specify the location as a subdomain. Public regional endpoints have the following format:

SERVICE.REGION.rep.googleapis.com

  • SERVICE: the name of the Google Cloud service, such as storage, compute, or bigquery.
  • REGION: the Google Cloud region name, such as us-central1 or europe-west1.

Private regional API endpoints have the following format:

SERVICE.REGION.p.rep.googleapis.com

  • SERVICE: the name of the Google Cloud service, such as storage, compute, or bigquery.
  • REGION: the Google Cloud region name, such as us-central1 or europe-west1.
  • .p.: indicates a private target intended for Private Service Connect connectivity.

Multiregional endpoints

Multiregional API endpoints provide access to Google Cloud services through an API endpoint that is scoped to a set of Google Cloud regions within the same country, such as the United States, India, or Canada, or jurisdiction, such as the European Union. Traffic sent to a multiregional endpoint is processed and TLS terminated entirely within the specified jurisdiction.

For most Google Cloud services, you can use multiregional endpoints to work with multiregional resources within the specified multiregion. Operations on global resources, regional resources, and multiregional resources from other jurisdictions are typically not supported.

Multiregional API endpoints specify the jurisdiction as a subdomain. Public multiregional endpoints have the following format:

SERVICE.MULTIREGION.rep.googleapis.com

  • SERVICE: the name of the Google Cloud service, such as storage, compute, or bigquery.
  • MULTIREGION: the Google Cloud multi-region name, such as us or eu.

Private multiregional API endpoints have the following format:

SERVICE.MULTIREGION.p.rep.googleapis.com

  • SERVICE: the name of the Google Cloud service, such as storage, compute, or bigquery.
  • MULTIREGION: the Google Cloud name of the multiregion, such as us or eu.
  • .p.: indicates a private target intended for Private Service Connect connectivity.

Global endpoints

Global API endpoints don't specify the location in the URL hostname. These globally scoped endpoints provide high-availability service endpoints that terminate the TLS session as close to the client as possible, which minimizes latency when serving API calls from a dispersed client population over the internet. However, these endpoints don't provide any regional isolation or data residency compliance.

For applications that can handle global dependencies and need fast performance from Google's global network, you can use global endpoints.

Global endpoints have the following format:

SERVICE.googleapis.com

Where SERVICE is the name of the Google Cloud service, such as storage, compute, or bigquery.

Locational endpoints

Regional API endpoints are replacing locational endpoints. Locational endpoints are regional or multiregional service hostnames that you can use to access data in a given location.

However, locational endpoints don't support the following features:

  • Data residency compliant connections from on-premises through the internet
  • Failure domain isolation

Locational endpoints specify the location in the URL hostname and have the following format:

LOCATION-SERVICE.googleapis.com

  • LOCATION: the Google Cloud region name, such as us-central1, europe-west1, or us.
  • SERVICE: the name of the Google Cloud service, such as storage, compute, or bigquery.

Reference documentation

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