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AWS Lake Formation vs BigQuery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
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
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 4.1%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigQuery is 7.4%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigQuery7.4%
AWS Lake Formation4.1%
Other88.5%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mikah Sellers - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal at Sgt Suds
Has supported detailed policy and education analysis with low-code data exploration
I do not use AWS as my main cloud provider within the company and am not currently using it with AWS. My company did not buy it through the AWS Marketplace as I'm the founder of the company. I do not use BigQuery's integration with Google Analytics for custom behavior analysis. I have not utilized the geospatial analysis capabilities with BigQuery as I'm doing mostly human capital work, so geospatial wouldn't make sense. I would rate their service on a scale of one to 10 for Google as ten. I would rate BigQuery as nine out of 10. My experience with the pricing for BigQuery was through a grant from Google. Their pricing is fairly priced and pretty comparable to Microsoft's offering. I haven't had direct experience, but I did look at the pricing of the Microsoft offering and it's pretty similar. I do not deal with Google AI tools such as Vertex.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"Every solution has its pros and cons, however, for our purposes, this solution works quite well for us."
"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."
"The most important advantage of using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS."
"BigQuery can be used for any type of company. It has the capability of building applications and storing data. It can be used for OLTP or OLAP. It has many other products within the Google space."
"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."
"It's pretty stable. It's fast, and it is able to go through large quantities of data pretty quickly."
"BigQuery is a very nice product; it is a good product, scalable, and has high performance."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution, in my opinion, are speed and performance, as well as cost-effectiveness."
"The query tool is scalable and allows for petabytes of data."
"The most valuable features of BigQuery is that it supports standard SQL and provides good performance."
 

Cons

"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"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."
"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. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"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."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation."
"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."
"Sometimes, support specialists might not have enough experience or business understanding, which can be an issue."
"I noticed recently it's more expensive now."
"The product’s performance could be much faster."
"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."
"So our challenge in Yemen is convincing many people to go to cloud services."
"We'd like to have more integrations with other technologies."
"The initial setup could be improved making it easier to deploy."
"I understand that Snowflake has made some improvements on its end to further reduce costs, so I believe BigQuery can catch up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"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 solution's pricing is cheaper compared to other solutions."
"BigQuery is inexpensive."
"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 product’s pricing could be more flexible for end users."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"The pricing is good and there are no additional costs involved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise20
 

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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
What is your primary use case for BigQuery?
We are mostly dealing with Google solutions such as BigQuery, NoSQL, SQL analytical database, secrets manager, and most of the serverless infrastructure as well, databases. I run SQL queries on Big...
 

Also Known As

No data available
BQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.