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 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.8% mindshare in CDW, compared to Google’s 7.3% 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

2,153 Views
1,744 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

BigQuery

Read 43 BigQuery reviews

4,243 Views
3,437 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 June 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 3.8%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigQuery is 7.3%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
BigQuery	7.3%
AWS Lake Formation	3.8%
Other	88.9%

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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Mikah Sellers

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.

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

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."

"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."

"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."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

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

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

"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."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"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."

"As a cloud solution, it's easy to set up."

"BigQuery allows for very fast access, and it is efficient in handling large datasets compared to other SQL databases."

"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."

"The most valuable aspect of BigQuery is its ability to handle high data workloads without causing friction with our online systems."

"The query tool is scalable and allows for petabytes of data."

"It has a proprietary way of storing and accessing data in its own data store and is 100% managed without you needing to install anything. There is no need to arrange for any infrastructure to be able to use this solution."

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

More BigQuery pros

Cons

"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

"With other columnar databases like Snowflake, you can actually increase your VM size or increase your machine size, and you can buy more memory and it will start working faster, but that's not available in BigQuery. You have to actually open a ticket and then follow it up with Google support."

"I rate BigQuery six out of 10 for affordability. It could be cheaper."

"The price could be better. Compared to competing solutions, BigQuery is expensive. It's only suitable for enterprise customers, not small and medium-sized businesses, as they cannot afford this kind of solution. In the next release, it would be better if they improved their AI bot. Although machine learning and artificial intelligence are doing wonders, there is still a lot of room to enhance them."

"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."

"I understand that Snowflake has made some improvements on its end to further reduce costs, so I believe BigQuery can catch up."

"The main challenges are in the areas of performance and cost optimizations."

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

"An area for improvement in BigQuery is its UI because it's not working very well. Pricing for the solution is also very high."

More BigQuery cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"The pricing appears to be competitive for the intended usage scenarios we have in mind."

"Price-wise, I think that is very reasonable."

"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."

"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 good and there are no additional costs involved."

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

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

"The tool has competitive pricing."

More BigQuery pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Media Company

Outsourcing 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	10
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...

See all answers

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 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

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 10% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs BigQuery

Compared 13% of the time

Snowflake vs BigQuery

Compared 11% of the time

Teradata vs BigQuery

Compared 10% of the time

Snowflake Analytics vs BigQuery

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Business Warehouse vs BigQuery

Compared 4% of the time

More BigQuery Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

May 2026

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

BigQuery

May 2026

Download BigQuery product report

Also Known As

No data available

Overview

AWS Lake Formation streamlines data lake organization by integrating seamlessly with AWS services, ensuring robust access control, and facilitating effective data management. Its extensible framework and centralized data handling make it ideal for cloud environments that require scalability.

AWS Lake Formation offers comprehensive data synchronization with AWS, robust security through fine-grained policies, and seamless team collaboration tools. It centralizes data assets, supports analytics with Glue, and enhances data mesh structures. Its IAM integration supports efficient governance, with reliable data storage and retrieval backed by extensive documentation. While highly efficient within AWS ecosystems, Lake Formation faces integration challenges with third-party libraries, and users experience clutter in its interface. Aspects such as automation, policy management, and debugging are areas for improvement. Enhancements in orchestration, cross-account sharing, and integrations with services like SageMaker are user recommendations.

What are the key features of AWS Lake Formation?

Data Synchronization: Integrates with AWS services for seamless data management.
Security Policies: Implements fine-grained access control for secure data handling.
Team Collaboration: Facilitates cooperation through centralized data management.
Analytics Support: Enhances data processing with Glue integration.
Extensibility: IAM integration allows scalable governance.

What benefits or ROI can users expect?

Scalability: Efficiently manages expanding data volumes.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces cloud data management expenses.
Data Security: Ensures compliance with robust policies.
Comprehensive Support: Access to detailed documentation and AWS resources.

Organizations utilize AWS Lake Formation across various industries to build and manage data lakes, ensuring effective data governance and storage solutions. It helps integrate and transform data, control permissions, and support analytics. From e-commerce to healthcare, AWS Lake Formation delivers centralized data repositories for structured and unstructured data, securing information while providing scalable infrastructure and efficient resource management.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

BigQuery is a powerful cloud-based data warehouse offering advanced SQL querying, seamless Google integration, and scalable handling of large datasets. Its serverless architecture and built-in AI capabilities facilitate efficient data processing and insights extraction.

BigQuery provides an efficient data analysis platform with low-latency performance and cost-effective on-demand pricing. Leveraging Google's cloud infrastructure for data storage, it offers robust security and high availability. While it excels in SQL support and caching features, it can improve on user accessibility, integration with diverse tools, and machine learning feature expansion. Making it more accessible for smaller entities through improved cost management and local data compliance is essential. Enhancements in query speed and intuitive interfaces can further optimize performance.

What features are offered by BigQuery?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies data interaction, making complex processes more manageable.
Serverless architecture: Eliminates the need for infrastructure management, improving scalability and efficiency.
Advanced SQL querying: Enables complex data retrieval and manipulation with ease.
Machine learning integration: Facilitates AI-driven insights directly from the platform.
Cost-effective pricing: On-demand pricing helps manage expenses by paying only for used resources.
Seamless Google integration: Works well with familiar Google services for a cohesive experience.
High availability and robust security: Ensures data is secure and accessible when needed.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating BigQuery?

Efficient data processing: Quickly handles large datasets, supporting fast data-driven decision-making.
Scalable infrastructure: Grows capacity alongside business needs without manual infrastructure adjustments.
Enhanced data analysis: SQL support and caching features improve analysis precision and speed.
AI and machine learning capabilities: Enable advanced data insights and predictive analytics.
Integration with existing tools: Ensures smooth workflow transitions with services such as Google Analytics and Tableau.

In industries like healthcare, finance, and marketing, BigQuery is extensively used for data storage, generating reports, and supporting ETL processes. Educational institutions leverage it for analytics, aligning seamlessly with Google Cloud for serverless infrastructure efficiencies.

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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