Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD)

Note

Important Update May 2025: Dear Community, We’d like to inform you of an upcoming change regarding the Genomics open datasets currently available through Azure. After careful consideration, we decided to shift our focus to new initiatives that will better serve our community and align with our long-term goals. As such, access to the Genomics open datasets on Azure will be deprecated in the coming months. We understand these datasets were valuable for research, development, and learning, and we deeply appreciate the contributions and engagement from our community over time. Thank you for your understanding and support.

The Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) is a resource developed by an international coalition of investigators, with the goal of aggregating and harmonizing both exome and genome sequencing data from a wide variety of large-scale sequencing projects, and making summary data available for the wider scientific community.

Note

Microsoft provides Azure Open Datasets on an “as is” basis. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, guarantees or conditions with respect to your use of the datasets. To the extent permitted under your local law, Microsoft disclaims all liability for any damages or losses, including direct, consequential, special, indirect, incidental or punitive, resulting from your use of the datasets.

This dataset is provided under the original terms that Microsoft received source data. The dataset may include data sourced from Microsoft.

Data source

This dataset is hosted as a collaboration with the Broad Institute and the full gnomAD data catalog can be seen at https://gnomad.broadinstitute.org/downloads

Data volumes and update frequency

This dataset contains approximately 30 TB of data and is updated with each gnomAD release.

Storage location

The Storage Account hosting this dataset is in the East US Azure region. Allocating compute resources in East US is recommended for affinity.

Data Access

Storage Account: 'https://datasetgnomad.blob.core.windows.net/dataset/'

The data is available publicly without restrictions, and the AzCopy tool is recommended for bulk operations. For example, to view the VCFs in release 3.0 of gnomAD:

$ azcopy ls https://datasetgnomad.blob.core.windows.net/dataset/release/3.0/vcf/genomes

To download all the VCFs recursively:

$ azcopy cp --recursive=true https://datasetgnomad.blob.core.windows.net/dataset/release/3.0/vcf/genomes .

NEW: Parquet format of gnomAD v2.1.1 VCF files (exomes and genomes)

To view the parquet files:

$ azcopy ls https://datasetgnomadparquet.blob.core.windows.net/dataset

To download all the parquet files recursively:

$ cp --recursive=true https://datasetgnomadparquet.blob.core.windows.net/dataset

The Azure Storage Explorer is also a useful tool for browsing the list of files in the gnomAD release.

Use Terms

Data is available without restrictions. For more information and citation details, see the gnomAD about page.

Contact

For any questions or feedback about this dataset, contact the gnomAD team.

Next steps

View the rest of the datasets in the Open Datasets catalog.