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 #12 with an average rating of 7.3, while Google is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 7.1% mindshare in CDW, compared to Google’s 9.1% mindshare. Additionally, 71% 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 8 AWS Lake Formation reviews

3,015 Views
2,587 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

BigQuery

Read 39 BigQuery reviews

3,998 Views
3,216 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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery

January 2025

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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

12th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

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

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 7.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigQuery is 9.1%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ramesh Raghavan

US South Lead, Accenture AWS Business Group at Accenture

Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better

There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.

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Sathishkumar Jayaprakash

Engineer at HTC Global Services (INDIA) Private

Efficient large dataset handling with seamless service integration

BigQuery allows for very fast access, and it is efficient in handling large datasets compared to other SQL databases. It integrates well with other GCP products, and creating subscriptions in the UI is straightforward. The whole ecosystem of GCP products makes BigQuery beneficial for our data-handling tasks. Additionally, it is more cost-effective compared to alternatives like AWS.

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 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."

"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."

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

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

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

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

"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."

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

"It's straightforward to set up."

"BigQuery processes a substantial amount of data, whether in gigabytes or terabytes, swiftly producing desired data within one or two minutes."

"The integrated data storage features are good."

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

"The product is serverless. We only need to write SQL queries to analyze the data. We need to pay based on the number of queries. The retrieval time is very less. Even if you write large queries, the tool is able to bring back data in a few seconds."

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

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

More BigQuery pros

Cons

"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."

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"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."

"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."

"Sometimes, support specialists might not have enough experience or business understanding, which can be an issue."

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

"There is a good amount of documentation out there, but they're consistently making changes to the platform, and, like, their literature hasn't been updated on some plans."

"There is a limitation when copying data directly from BigQuery; it only supports up to ten MB when copying data to the clipboard."

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

"It would be helpful if they could provide some dashboards where you can easily view charts and information."

"I would like to see version-based implementation and a fallback arrangement for data stored in BigQuery storage. These are some features I'm interested in."

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

"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."

"I have tried my own setup using my Gmail ID, and I think it had a $300 limit for free for a new user. That's what Google is offering, and we can register and create a project."

"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."

"BigQuery pricing can increase quickly. It's a high-priced solution."

"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."

More BigQuery pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?

It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.

See all answers

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

The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...

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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?

The price is perceived as expensive, rated at eight out of ten in terms of costliness. Still, it offers significant cost savings.

See all answers

What needs improvement with BigQuery?

When I execute a query, the dashboard doesn't always present the output seamlessly. Troubleshooting requires opening each pipeline individually, which is time-consuming. Moreover, pricing, the abse...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 40% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs AWS Lake Formation

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Amazon EMR vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 35% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

Vertica vs BigQuery

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs BigQuery

Compared 12% of the time

Dremio vs BigQuery

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

BigQuery

January 2025

Download BigQuery product report

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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google

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.

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.

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

January 2025

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. BigQuery

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