Google Storage Transfer API
Browse all Google APIs39
AI ReadinessNon-Ready (F)39/100
Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyStorageObject Storageoauth215 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Schedule and run bulk data transfers into Google Cloud Storage from S3, HTTP, on-prem, or another GCS bucket. Pause, resume, or cancel running transfer operations.
Use for: I want to migrate an S3 bucket into Cloud Storage, Create a scheduled daily transfer from S3 to GCS, Run a transfer job immediately, Pause a running storage transfer operation
Not supported: Does not run per-object reads or writes, transform records in-flight, or move data out of Cloud Storage to external sinks - use for scheduled bulk ingestion into Cloud Storage only.
The Storage Transfer API moves data into Google Cloud Storage on a schedule or on demand. It supports transfers from Amazon S3, HTTP/HTTPS sources, on-premises POSIX file systems via agent pools, and another Cloud Storage bucket. A transfer job describes source, destination, schedule, and filtering rules; transfer operations are individual runs of those jobs that can be paused, resumed, or cancelled. The API also exposes Google service accounts used to grant the transfer service access to source data.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Storage Transfer API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Storage Transfer API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fgoogleapis.com%2Fstoragetransfer" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fgoogleapis.com%2Fstoragetransfer" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Storage Transfer API.
Create scheduled or one-shot transfer jobs from S3, HTTP, on-premises, or another Cloud Storage bucket
Run a transfer job immediately and track the resulting transfer operation
Pause, resume, or cancel a long-running transfer operation
Manage agent pools used for on-premises POSIX-source transfers
List Google service accounts that the transfer service uses to access source storage
Filter source data by prefix or last-modified time before transferring
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Storage Transfer API for, with concrete tasks.
★ S3 to GCS Migration
Migrate a multi-terabyte S3 bucket into Cloud Storage as part of a cloud move. The Storage Transfer API accepts an awsS3DataSource with the bucket name and access credentials and a gcsDataSink with the destination bucket. The service handles parallelism, retries, and integrity checks; progress is reported through the transfer operation.
POST /v1/transferJobs with awsS3DataSource.bucketName='legacy-data', gcsDataSink.bucketName='migrated-data', schedule.scheduleStartDate=today.
Daily Vendor Drop Ingestion
Ingest a daily file drop from a partner's HTTPS endpoint into a Cloud Storage landing bucket. The transfer job runs on a schedule, fetches the file list, and copies new objects into the sink. Filtering rules skip already-transferred objects so each run handles only the deltas.
POST /v1/transferJobs with httpDataSource.listUrl=https://partner.example/manifest.tsv, gcsDataSink.bucketName='vendor-drops', schedule.scheduleStartDate=tomorrow.
On-Premises NAS Backup
Back up files from an on-premises NAS into a Cloud Storage archive bucket using a transfer agent pool. The Storage Transfer API exposes agent pool management for hosting the on-prem agents, and a posixDataSource on the transfer job that points the agent at a local path.
POST /v1/projects/myproj/agentPools to register the pool, then POST /v1/transferJobs with posixDataSource.rootDirectory='/mnt/nas/share' and the pool name.
AI Agent Data Sync
An AI agent setting up a new analytics environment needs to copy a snapshot of an existing GCS bucket into the new project's bucket. Through Jentic, the agent searches for the create-transfer-job operation, loads the schema, and submits the job - Jentic handles auth so the agent never sees the underlying access token.
Search Jentic for 'transfer data into Cloud Storage', execute POST /v1/transferJobs with gcsDataSource.bucketName='source' and gcsDataSink.bucketName='dest'.
Key Endpoints
15 endpoints — the storage transfer api moves data into google cloud storage on a schedule or on demand.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/v1/transferJobs
Create a transfer job
GET
/v1/transferJobs
List transfer jobs in a project
POST
/v1/{+jobName}:run
Run a transfer job immediately
POST
/v1/{+name}:pause
Pause a running transfer operation
POST
/v1/{+name}:resume
Resume a paused transfer operation
POST
/v1/{+name}:cancel
Cancel a running transfer operation
GET
/v1/googleServiceAccounts/{projectId}
Get the Google service account used by Storage Transfer for a project
GET
/v1/projects/{+projectId}/agentPools
List on-premises agent pools in a project
POST
/v1/transferJobs
Create a transfer job
GET
/v1/transferJobs
List transfer jobs in a project
POST
/v1/{+jobName}:run
Run a transfer job immediately
POST
/v1/{+name}:pause
Pause a running transfer operation
POST
/v1/{+name}:resume
Resume a paused transfer operation
POST
/v1/{+name}:cancel
Cancel a running transfer operation
GET
/v1/googleServiceAccounts/{projectId}
Get the Google service account used by Storage Transfer for a project
GET
/v1/projects/{+projectId}/agentPools
List on-premises agent pools in a project
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
S
Storage Transfer API
- Non-Ready (F)39/100
43
Foundational Compliance56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility20
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability63
Security44
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
43
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: DSignals: 4
73%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
0%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
0%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: CSignals: 4
0%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
25%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
20
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: FSignals: 4
79%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
0%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
0%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
63
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: B-Signals: 1
62%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
44
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: DSignals: 1
44%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the Storage Transfer API by hand means configuring a service account, minting OAuth access tokens against storagetransfer.googleapis.com, and looking up the project's transfer service account yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Storage Transfer API from the API Directory, store the OAuth credential once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
Storage Transfer puts the job name in the URL path (/v1/{jobName}:run, /v1/{name}:pause), so a rule can pin your agent to the jobs you name: it can create and run those transfer jobs and nothing else. You choose the operations it may call, so pause, resume, or cancel are not included unless you add them.
Credential isolation
Your Storage Transfer OAuth credential is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'transfer data into Cloud Storage' or 'migrate from S3 to GCS', and Jentic returns the matching Storage Transfer operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Storage Transfer API through Jentic.
What authentication does the Storage Transfer API use?
The Storage Transfer API uses OAuth 2.0 with the cloud-platform scope. Source access is delegated to a project-specific Google service account that must be granted read access on the S3, HTTP, or source GCS bucket. Through Jentic, OAuth credentials are stored in your Jentic One instance and exchanged for short-lived access tokens.
Can I migrate from Amazon S3 with the Storage Transfer API?
Yes. Set awsS3DataSource on the transferSpec with the source bucket name and either an AWS access key pair or, preferably, role federation. The transfer service handles parallel object copy, retries, and integrity checks against the destination Cloud Storage bucket.
What are the rate limits for the Storage Transfer API?
Storage Transfer scales transfer throughput based on the source and sink rather than per-call quotas, but admin calls (job creation, listing) are subject to the standard project per-minute quotas - typically a few hundred requests per minute. Source-side limits (e.g. S3 LIST quotas) often dominate large migrations.
How do I run a transfer job through Jentic?
Search Jentic for 'transfer data into Cloud Storage', load the transferJobs.create schema, and execute POST /v1/transferJobs. To run an existing job immediately, call POST /v1/{+jobName}:run, which Jentic surfaces as a separate operation.
Is the Storage Transfer API free?
The Storage Transfer Service is free for transfers from another Cloud Storage bucket and for on-premises agent transfers. Transfers from Amazon S3 or HTTP sources are billed per GB. Standard Cloud Storage operation, storage, and egress charges still apply on the destination side.
Can I pause and resume a running transfer?
Yes. POST /v1/{+name}:pause halts a running transferOperation and POST /v1/{+name}:resume continues it. POST /v1/{+name}:cancel terminates the operation entirely without resuming.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Storage Transfer API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which Storage Transfer operations and credentials the agent may use. Since the job name sits in the URL path (POST /v1/{jobName}:run, POST /v1/{name}:pause), you can pin the agent to specific jobs and let it only create and run those, while excluding pause, resume, and cancel unless you explicitly grant them. The OAuth credential stays with your Jentic One instance and is injected at execution, so the agent calls only the endpoints you allow.
GET STARTED