Amazon Redshift vs Google BigQuery: Battle of the Cloud Data Warehouses
Are you struggling to decide between Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery? Don't worry; you're not alone. Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery are two of the most popular cloud data warehouse options for companies worldwide. Both solutions offer excellent performance, scalability, and ease-of-use, but which one is the best fit for your business needs?
In this blog post, we'll provide a factual comparison of Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery, including numbers where possible, and help you make an informed decision about which one to choose.
Overview
Let's start with a brief overview of each solution. Amazon Redshift is Amazon's cloud-based data warehousing service that provides a petabyte-scale warehouse to enable data analysis across your entire organization, fast query performance using standard SQL, and security across all layers of data warehousing. On the other hand, Google BigQuery is a serverless data warehousing and analytics platform that allows for super-fast SQL queries using the processing power of Google's infrastructure.
Pricing
Pricing is always a significant factor when choosing a cloud-based solution. Let's compare the pricing structure of both Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery.
Amazon Redshift pricing structure is based on three components: Compute Nodes, Storage, and Data Transfer. The Compute Nodes charges are on-demand or reserved. Besides, storage is priced per gigabyte per month, and data transfers between EC2 and Amazon Redshift are free.
Google BigQuery, however, offers a pricing structure that's based purely on usage. Companies are charged based on the number of bytes processed by queries, with a free monthly usage limit of 1 TB. After the free limit is reached, the cost per TB is low, and the prices vary based on the region.
Performance
Both Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery offer excellent performance, but each solution has its advantages. Amazon Redshift offers a high-performance data warehouse that can process up to two times more queries than competing cloud solutions. It can handle complex queries, and users can easily scale their solution up or down.
Google BigQuery offers unmatched query speeds, especially for large datasets. Google's infrastructure is designed to process massive volumes of data in seconds, and it provides excellent scalability.
Ease of Use
Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery offer user-friendly interfaces that simplify data warehousing tasks. Amazon Redshift provides an intuitive management console to manage your data warehouse and offers additional functionalities through third-party applications. On the other hand, Google BigQuery offers an easy-to-use web interface, seamless integration with other Google Cloud services, and a REST API for programmatic access.