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When you use Bring your own bucket (BYOB), W&B Dedicated Cloud, or W&B Self-Managed, your team often pays cloud storage providers directly. This page explains what occupies your bucket, how W&B removes objects after deletion in the app or API, and what you should expect in practice.

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What uses bucket space

W&B stores several categories of data in your configured object storage. The BYOB overview lists examples, including experiment files and metrics, artifact files, media files, run files, and exported history in Parquet form. Together these drive bucket size and cost.

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How W&B removes data from storage

Deletion in the W&B App or Public API updates W&B metadata first. Removing a run, artifact, or file from the product does not guarantee an immediate drop in reported bucket usage. Object storage cleanup runs as background work that can lag, especially on busy instances.

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Artifacts

Deleted artifacts are soft-deleted, then processed by artifact garbage collection. Self-managed deployments must set GORILLA_ARTIFACT_GC_ENABLED and meet provider requirements such as versioning or soft delete. See Delete an artifact and Configure environment variables.

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Run data and run files

After runs or run-associated files are deleted, permanent removal of the underlying stored objects is controlled separately from artifacts. On Dedicated Cloud and Self-Managed deployments, GORILLA_DATA_RETENTION_PERIOD sets how long deleted run data is retained before it can be removed from storage. This setting does not delete artifacts. See Configure environment variables, Data retention policy for Dedicated Cloud, and Delete runs for how run and file deletion relates to storage.

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What to expect from background cleanup

Garbage collection and related jobs that free object storage are best-effort. W&B does not guarantee that a given object disappears from your bucket within a specific time after you delete content in the UI or API. Projects with very large numbers of files (for example many media files per run) can see longer delays before storage usage falls. Monitor your bucket in your cloud provider and contact W&B Support or your account team if cleanup appears stuck relative to your expectations.

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Reduce bucket usage

Use supported product flows first: If you must reclaim space immediately, operators with access to the bucket may delete specific object keys directly in cloud storage. Be aware of the following:
  • Objects you remove will no longer be available to download through W&B.
  • You should delete only keys you intend to remove. Incorrect deletes can break access to data the app still references.
  • If your bucket uses object versioning or provider soft delete (for example on Google Cloud Storage), storage charges can persist until non-current versions or soft-deleted objects expire under your cloud lifecycle rules.
For high-level usage in W&B Multi-tenant Cloud, organization admins can review storage-related usage from organization settings. See Billing settings.

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Troubleshooting

If deletions do not appear correctly in the W&B App after you use the Public API, upgrade the W&B Python SDK to a current release and retry. Very large per-run file counts can increase how long background cleanup takes across the instance. For scripted cleanup patterns that match your deployment, contact W&B Support or your account team.