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 #4 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 4.7% mindshare in CDW, compared to Google’s 8.0% 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

1,610 Views
1,385 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

BigQuery

Read 43 BigQuery reviews

3,228 Views
2,615 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: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery

March 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

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 4.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigQuery is 8.0%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
BigQuery	8.0%
AWS Lake Formation	4.7%
Other	87.3%

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

"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."

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

"The integration of AWS Lake Formation with the IAM for authentication and authorization is very good; I didn't have any problems in the setup and thought it was simple."

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

"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."

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

"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."

"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"The integrated data storage features are good."

"Even non-coders can review the data in BigQuery."

"What I like most about BigQuery is that it's fast and flexible. Another advantage of BigQuery is that it's easy to learn."

"There are some performance features like partitioning, which you can do based on an integer, and it improves the performance a lot."

"BigQuery excels at structuring data, performing predictions, and conducting insightful analyses and it leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, powered by Google's Duarte AI."

"BigQuery's querying capabilities are very optimized for large datasets."

"One of the most significant advantages lies in the decoupling of storage and compute which allows to independently scale storage and compute resources, with the added benefit of extremely cost-effective storage akin to object storage solutions."

"When integrating their system into the cloud-based solutions, we were able to increase their efficiency and overall productivity twice compared with their on-premises option."

More BigQuery pros

Cons

"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."

"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."

"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."

"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."

"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. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."

"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."

"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."

"I think AWS Lake Formation could improve by enforcing the least privilege by design, moving from ad hoc grants to role-based access controls."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

"The primary hurdle in this migration lies in the initial phase of moving substantial volumes of data to cloud-based platforms."

"The product’s performance could be much faster."

"It would be better if BigQuery didn't have huge restrictions. For example, when we migrate from on-premises to on-premise, the data which handles all ebook characters can be handled on-premise. But in BigQuery, we have huge restrictions. If we have some symbols, like a hash or other special characters, it won't accept them. Not in all cases, but it won't accept a few special characters, and when we migrate, we get errors. We need to use Regexp or something similar to replace that with another character. This isn't expected from a high-range technology like BigQuery. It has to adapt all products. For instance, if we have a TV Showroom, the TV symbol will be there in the shop name. Teradata and Apache Spark accept this, but BigQuery won't. This is the primary concern that we had. In the next release, it would be better if the query on the external table also had cache. Right now, we are using a GCS bucket, and in the native table, we have cache. For example, if we query the same table, it won't cost because it will try to fetch the records from the cached result. But when we run queries on the external table a number of times, it won't be cached. That's a major drawback of BigQuery. Only the native table has the cache option, and the external table doesn't. If there is an option to have an external table for cache purposes, it'll be a significant advantage for our organization."

"The initial setup could be improved making it easier to deploy."

"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."

"So our challenge in Yemen is convincing many people to go to cloud services."

"When it comes to queries or the code being executed in the data warehouse, the management of this code, like integration with the GitHub repository or the GitLab repository, is kind of complicated, and it's not so direct."

"The process of migrating from Datastore to BigQuery should be improved."

More BigQuery cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"The solution is pretty affordable and quite cheap in comparison to PDP or Cloudera."

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

"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."

"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 price could be better. Usually, you need to buy the license for a year. Whenever you want more, you can subscribe to it, and you can use it. Otherwise, you can terminate the license. You can use it daily or monthly, and we use it based on a project's requirements."

"BigQuery is inexpensive."

"The tool has competitive pricing."

"The platform is inexpensive."

More BigQuery pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

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?

There are areas that could be improved with BigQuery, such as more bolt-on capabilities and the ability to use more bolt-ons for APIs. Having more of a library of connectors would be really benefic...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

Snowflake vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 13% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EMR vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 6% of the time

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Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs BigQuery

Compared 16% 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 8% of the time

Dremio vs BigQuery

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

March 2026

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Buyer's Guide

BigQuery

March 2026

Download BigQuery product report

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

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery

March 2026

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