AWS Lake Formation vs BigQuery comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.1, while Google is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 4.4% mindshare in CDW, compared to Google’s 7.7% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google users who would recommend it.

AWS Lake Formation

Read 21 AWS Lake Formation reviews

1,793 Views
1,506 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

BigQuery

Read 43 BigQuery reviews

3,546 Views
2,872 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

BigQuery

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

AWS Lake Formation and BigQuery are competing in the cloud services market, particularly in data management and analytics. BigQuery stands out with its superior feature set, offering robust analytics capabilities, while AWS Lake Formation emphasizes strong data governance and security.

Features: AWS Lake Formation focuses on data lake creation, security, governance, and simplifies access rights management. BigQuery offers high-speed SQL analytics, real-time querying, and machine learning integration. The distinction is in AWS's strong governance compared to BigQuery's advanced analytical capabilities.

Room for Improvement: AWS Lake Formation could enhance real-time analytics and improve its machine learning features. It might also benefit from simplified ETL job setups. BigQuery could lower costs for extensive use cases, refine data governance tools, and offer better integration with non-Google services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Lake Formation is well-integrated with the AWS ecosystem, offering seamless service integration and extensive support. BigQuery’s serverless architecture allows for quick deployment with minimal configuration. While AWS offers personalized customer service, BigQuery provides extensive documentation and online resources.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Lake Formation is cost-effective with flexible pricing models based on storage needs, potentially offering lower initial setup costs. BigQuery uses pay-as-you-go billing for queries, which might be costlier in high-use scenarios but efficient for variable workloads. AWS provides ROI through efficient data management, while BigQuery offers ROI via enhanced analytical capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery

April 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

AWS Lake Formation

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

BigQuery

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 4.4%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigQuery is 7.7%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
BigQuery	7.7%
AWS Lake Formation	4.4%
Other	87.9%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra

Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.

Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams

In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

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Luís Silva

Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Handles large data sets efficiently and offers flexible data management capabilities

The features I find most valuable in this solution are the ability to run and handle large data sets in a very efficient way with multiple types of data, relational as SQL data. It is kind of difficult to explain, but structured data and the ability to handle large data sets are key features. The data integration capabilities in BigQuery were, in fact, an issue at the beginning. There are two types of integrations. As long as integration is within Google, it is pretty simple. When you start to try to connect external clients to that data, it becomes more complex. It is not related to BigQuery, it is related to Google security model, which is not easy to manage. I would not call it an integration issue of BigQuery, I would call it an integration issue of Google security model.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."

"The main benefits that I have seen from using AWS Lake Formation are related to FinOps because you have control of your data and can track your costs since AWS Lake Formation is integrated into a unique platform, which is AWS Cloud Service."

"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."

"The features and capabilities of AWS Lake Formation that I have found most valuable are that it is really convenient to see all the different data assets that were configured and understand who has and what type of service has or does not have access to those services."

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."

"The most important advantage of using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS."

"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."

"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"BigQuery is a powerful tool for managing and analyzing large datasets. The versatility of BigQuery extends to its compatibility with external data visualization tools like Power BI and Tableau. This means you not only get query results but can also seamlessly integrate and visualize your data for better insights."

"We can analyze terabytes of data in a very small amount of time."

"The most valuable features of BigQuery is that it supports standard SQL and provides good performance."

"The most valuable features of this solution, in my opinion, are speed and performance, as well as cost-effectiveness."

"It is stable and reliable; there are no bugs or glitches."

"The initial setup is simple."

"Using BigQuery's central repository brings dispersed information together, which facilitates exploring the data and gaining insights, and consequently, it improves operations, response time, and the business overall."

"BigQuery is similar to Snowflake in the way it manages data analytics and completely decouples storage from compute, offering a 100% managed, infrastructure-free solution where you can build an end-to-end data platform directly from a browser console."

More BigQuery pros

Cons

"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."

"You need to have data experience to use the product."

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."

"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."

"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."

"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

"BigQuery now only allows us to run queries. It doesn't provide us with any insights."

"When I execute a query, the dashboard doesn't always present the output seamlessly."

"I noticed recently it's more expensive now."

"For greater flexibility and ease of use, it would be beneficial if BigQuery offered more third-party add-ons and connectors, particularly for databases that don't have built-in integration options."

"We'd like to see more local data residency."

"I am unsure of the scalability because I need to test it with a bigger project."

"Some of the queries are complex and difficult to understand."

"When I open many of the Google Cloud products, I am in an environment that I do not feel familiar with; it is a little overwhelming."

More BigQuery cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"One terabyte of data costs $20 to $22 per month for storage on BigQuery and $25 on Snowflake. Snowflake is costlier for one terabyte, but BigQuery charges based on how much data is inserted into the tables. BigQuery charges you based on the amount of data that you handle and not the time in which you handle it. This is why the pricing models are different and it becomes a key consideration in the decision of which platform to use."

"The platform is inexpensive."

"1 TB is free of cost monthly. If you use more than 1 TB a month, then you need to pay 5 dollars extra for each TB."

"The pricing is adaptable, ensuring that organizations can tailor their usage and costs based on their specific requirements and configurations within the Google Cloud Platform."

"The pricing is good and there are no additional costs involved."

"We are above the free threshold, so we are paying around 40 euros per month for BigQuery."

"The price is a bit high but the technology is worth it."

"The tool has competitive pricing."

More BigQuery pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	20

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?

I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...

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What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...

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What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?

My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...

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What do you like most about BigQuery?

The initial setup process is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigQuery?

I believe the cost of BigQuery is competitive versus the alternatives in the market, but it can become expensive if the tool is not used properly. It is on a per-consumption basis, the billing, so ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with BigQuery?

With what I have seen in BigQuery, I had some response times problems, but then it is an analytical database and not a transactional database, so it comes with eventual consistency. I cannot have e...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 12% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EMR vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 5% of the time

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Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs BigQuery

Compared 15% of the time

Teradata vs BigQuery

Compared 10% of the time

Snowflake vs BigQuery

Compared 10% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs BigQuery

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs BigQuery

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

April 2026

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

BigQuery

April 2026

Download BigQuery product report

Also Known As

No data available

Overview

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

BigQuery is an enterprise data warehouse that solves this problem by enabling super-fast SQL queries using the processing power of Google's infrastructure. ... You can control access to both the project and your data based on your business needs, such as giving others the ability to view or query your data.

Google

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery

April 2026

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