Apache Cassandra vs. Google BigQuery

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cassandra
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Cassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.N/A
Google BigQuery
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Google's BigQuery is part of the Google Cloud Platform, a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) supporting the querying and rapid analysis of enterprise data.
$6.25
per TiB (after the 1st 1 TiB per month, which is free)
Pricing
Apache CassandraGoogle BigQuery
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard edition
$0.04 / slot hour
Enterprise edition
$0.06 / slot hour
Enterprise Plus edition
$0.10 / slot hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CassandraGoogle BigQuery
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache CassandraGoogle BigQuery
Considered Both Products
Cassandra

No answer on this topic

Google BigQuery
Chose Google BigQuery
Other locally hosted solutions are capable of providing the required level of performance, but the administration requirements are significantly more involved than with BigQuery. Additionally, there are capacity and availability concerns with locally hosted platforms that are a …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache CassandraGoogle BigQuery
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cassandra
8.0
5 Ratings
9% below category average
Google BigQuery
-
Ratings
Performance8.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability8.85 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency7.65 Ratings00 Ratings
Security8.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility6.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility7.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cassandra
-
Ratings
Google BigQuery
8.4
53 Ratings
4% below category average
Automatic software patching00 Ratings8.117 Ratings
Database scalability00 Ratings8.853 Ratings
Automated backups00 Ratings8.524 Ratings
Database security provisions00 Ratings8.746 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics00 Ratings8.448 Ratings
Automatic host deployment00 Ratings8.113 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache CassandraGoogle BigQuery
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CassandraGoogle BigQuery
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(16 ratings)
8.6
(53 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(16 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CassandraGoogle BigQuery
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database and well suited where you need highly available, linearly scalable, tunable consistency and high performance across varying workloads. It has worked well for our use cases, and I shared my experiences to use it effectively at the last Cassandra summit! http://bit.ly/1Ok56TK It is a NoSQL database, finally you can tune it to be strongly consistent and successfully use it as such. However those are not usual patterns, as you negotiate on latency. It works well if you require that. If your use case needs strongly consistent environments with semantics of a relational database or if the use case needs a data warehouse, or if you need NoSQL with ACID transactions, Apache Cassandra may not be the optimum choice.
Read full review
Google
Google BigQuery really shines in scenarios requiring real-time analytics on large data streams and predictive analytics with its machine learning integration. Teams have been using it extensively all over. However, it may not be the best fit for organizations dealing with small datasets because of the higher costs. And also, it might not be the best fit for highly complex data transformations, where simpler or more specialized solutions could be more appropriate.
Read full review
Pros
Apache
  • Continuous availability: as a fully distributed database (no master nodes), we can update nodes with rolling restarts and accommodate minor outages without impacting our customer services.
  • Linear scalability: for every unit of compute that you add, you get an equivalent unit of capacity. The same application can scale from a single developer's laptop to a web-scale service with billions of rows in a table.
  • Amazing performance: if you design your data model correctly, bearing in mind the queries you need to answer, you can get answers in milliseconds.
  • Time-series data: Cassandra excels at recording, processing, and retrieving time-series data. It's a simple matter to version everything and simply record what happens, rather than going back and editing things. Then, you can compute things from the recorded history.
Read full review
Google
  • Its serverless architecture and underlying Dremel technology are incredibly fast even on complex datasets. I can get answers to my questions almost instantly, without waiting hours for traditional data warehouses to churn through the data.
  • Previously, our data was scattered across various databases and spreadsheets and getting a holistic view was pretty difficult. Google BigQuery acts as a central repository and consolidates everything in one place to join data sets and find hidden patterns.
  • Running reports on our old systems used to take forever. Google BigQuery's crazy fast query speed lets us get insights from massive datasets in seconds.
Read full review
Cons
Apache
  • Cassandra runs on the JVM and therefor may require a lot of GC tuning for read/write intensive applications.
  • Requires manual periodic maintenance - for example it is recommended to run a cleanup on a regular basis.
  • There are a lot of knobs and buttons to configure the system. For many cases the default configuration will be sufficient, but if its not - you will need significant ramp up on the inner workings of Cassandra in order to effectively tune it.
Read full review
Google
  • It is challenging to predict costs due to BigQuery's pay-per-query pricing model. User-friendly cost estimation tools, along with improved budget alerting features, could help users better manage and predict expenses.
  • The BigQuery interface is less intuitive. A more user-friendly interface, enhanced documentation, and built-in tutorial systems could make BigQuery more accessible to a broader audience.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apache
I would recommend Cassandra DB to those who know their use case very well, as well as know how they are going to store and retrieve data. If you need a guarantee in data storage and retrieval, and a DB that can be linearly grown by adding nodes across availability zones and regions, then this is the database you should choose.
Read full review
Google
We have to use this product as its a 3rd party supplier choice to utilise this product for their data side backend so will not be likely we will move away from this product in the future unless the 3rd party supplier decides to change data vendors.
Read full review
Usability
Apache
It’s great tool but it can be complicated when it comes administration and maintenance.
Read full review
Google
web UI is easy and convenient. Many RDBMS clients such as aqua data studio, Dbeaver data grid, and others connect. Range of well-documented APIs available. The range of features keeps expanding, increasing similar features to traditional RDBMS such as Oracle and DB2
Read full review
Support Rating
Apache
Sometimes instead giving straight answer, we ‘re getting transfered to talk professional service.
Read full review
Google
BigQuery can be difficult to support because it is so solid as a product. Many of the issues you will see are related to your own data sets, however you may see issues importing data and managing jobs. If this occurs, it can be a challenge to get to speak to the correct person who can help you.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Apache
We evaluated MongoDB also, but don't like the single point failure possibility. The HBase coupled us too tightly to the Hadoop world while we prefer more technical flexibility. Also HBase is designed for "cold"/old historical data lake use cases and is not typically used for web and mobile applications due to its performance concern. Cassandra, by contrast, offers the availability and performance necessary for developing highly available applications. Furthermore, the Hadoop technology stack is typically deployed in a single location, while in the big international enterprise context, we demand the feasibility for deployment across countries and continents, hence finally we are favor of Cassandra
Read full review
Google
I have used Snowflake and DataGrip for data retrieval as well as Google BigQuery and can say that all these tools compete for head to head. It is very difficult to say which is better than the other but some features provided by Google BigQuery give it an edge over the others. For example, the reliability of Google is unmatchable by others. One thing that I really like is the ability to integrate Data Studio so easily with Google BigQuery.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Apache
No answers on this topic
Google
None so far. Very satisfied with the transparency on contract terms and pricing model.
Read full review
Professional Services
Apache
No answers on this topic
Google
Google Support has kindly provide individual support and consultants to assist with the integration work. In the circumstance where the consultants are not present to support with the work, Google Support Helpline will always be available to answer to the queries without having to wait for more than 3 days.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apache
  • I have no experience with this but from the blogs and news what I believe is that in businesses where there is high demand for scalability, Cassandra is a good choice to go for.
  • Since it works on CQL, it is quite familiar with SQL in understanding therefore it does not prevent a new employee to start in learning and having the Cassandra experience at an industrial level.
Read full review
Google
  • Pricing has been very reasonable for us. The first 10 GB of storage is free each month and costs start at 2 cents per GB per month after that. For example, if you store 1 terabyte (TB) for a month, then the cost would be $20. Streaming data inserts start at 1 cent per 200 megabytes (MBs). The first 1 TB of queries is free, with additional analysis at $5 per TB thereafter. Meta data operations are free.
  • Big Query helps reduce the bar for data analytics, ML and AI. BQ takes care of mundane tasks and streamlines for easy data processing, consumption. The most impressive thing is the ML and AI integration as SQL functions, so the need for moving data around is minimized.
  • The visuals of ML models is very helpful to fine tune training, model building and prediction, etc.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Google BigQuery Screenshots

Screenshot of Migrating data warehouses to BigQuery - Features a streamlined migration path from Netezza, Oracle, Redshift, Teradata, or Snowflake to BigQuery using the fully managed BigQuery Migration Service.Screenshot of bringing any data into BigQuery - Data files can be uploaded from local sources, Google Drive, or Cloud Storage buckets, using BigQuery Data Transfer Service (DTS), Cloud Data Fusion plugins, by replicating data from relational databases with Datastream for BigQuery, or by leveraging Google's data integration partnerships.Screenshot of generative AI use cases with BigQuery and Gemini models - Data pipelines that blend structured data, unstructured data and generative AI models together can be built to create a new class of analytical applications. BigQuery integrates with Gemini 1.0 Pro using Vertex AI. The Gemini 1.0 Pro model is designed for higher input/output scale and better result quality across a wide range of tasks like text summarization and sentiment analysis. It can be accessed using simple SQL statements or BigQuery’s embedded DataFrame API from right inside the BigQuery console.Screenshot of insights derived from images, documents, and audio files, combined with structured data - Unstructured data represents a large portion of untapped enterprise data. However, it can be challenging to interpret, making it difficult to extract meaningful insights from it. Leveraging the power of BigLake, users can derive insights from images, documents, and audio files using a broad range of AI models including Vertex AI’s vision, document processing, and speech-to-text APIs, open-source TensorFlow Hub models, or custom models.Screenshot of event-driven analysis - Built-in streaming capabilities automatically ingest streaming data and make it immediately available to query. This allows users to make business decisions based on the freshest data. Or Dataflow can be used to enable simplified streaming data pipelines.Screenshot of predicting business outcomes AI/ML - Predictive analytics can be used to streamline operations, boost revenue, and mitigate risk. BigQuery ML democratizes the use of ML by empowering data analysts to build and run models using existing business intelligence tools and spreadsheets.