Google App Engine vs. Google BigQuery

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google App Engine
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google App Engine is Google Cloud's platform-as-a-service offering. It features pay-per-use pricing and support for a broad array of programming languages.
$0.05
Per Hour Per Instance
Google BigQuery
Score 8.8 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
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Editions & Modules
Starting Price
$0.05
Per Hour Per Instance
Max Price
$0.30
Per Hour Per Instance
Standard edition
$0.04 / slot hour
Enterprise edition
$0.06 / slot hour
Enterprise Plus edition
$0.10 / slot hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Considered Both Products
Google App Engine
Chose Google App Engine
It's the manageability of the Google App Engine which made it a better option in our case.
It's quite straightforward to deploy on App-Engine.
No worries for monitoring setup
Chose Google App Engine
We were on another much smaller cloud provider and decided to make the switch for several reasons - stability, breadth of services, and security. In reviewing options, GCP provided the best mixtures of meeting our needs while also balancing the overall cost of the service as …
Chose Google App Engine
App Engine is a much more streamlined system than EC2. There is a fundamental difference between them, but they are used for basically the same thing as far a I could tell -- to serve applications EC2 is certainly more complicated, but if offers more machine-level control if …
Google BigQuery
Chose Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery seemlessly integrates with all the Google services. In Looker Studio you directly have a connector for Google BigQuery which can help to create dashboards in few clicks.
For automating some stored procedures we have used Cloud Functions which are triggered by a …
Chose Google BigQuery
We selected BigQuery since we were already making use of many other offerings within the Google Cloud Platform and it made sense to stay within that eco-system. Of course, we made sure it met our needs and was cost-effective, and when it did we didn't seriously consider an …
Chose Google BigQuery
BigQuery by far the best solution in all angles compared to other ones: Especially scalability, ease of use, performance and there is no need to manage any cluster of servers. Also it's ABSOLUTELY pay as you go! No one in market currently provide such service that can compete …
Features
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google App Engine
9.5
32 Ratings
20% above category average
Google BigQuery
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces9.018 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability10.032 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead9.032 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability8.024 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control10.031 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification9.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery9.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google App Engine
-
Ratings
Google BigQuery
8.5
80 Ratings
0% above category average
Automatic software patching00 Ratings8.017 Ratings
Database scalability00 Ratings9.179 Ratings
Automated backups00 Ratings8.524 Ratings
Database security provisions00 Ratings8.773 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics00 Ratings8.475 Ratings
Automatic host deployment00 Ratings8.013 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(35 ratings)
8.8
(77 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(8 ratings)
8.1
(5 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(7 ratings)
7.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(12 ratings)
5.3
(11 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google App EngineGoogle BigQuery
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
App Engine is such a good resource for our team both internally and externally. You have complete control over your app, how it runs, when it runs, and more while Google handles the back-end, scaling, orchestration, and so on. If you are serving a tool, system, or web page, it's perfect. If you are serving something back-end, like an automation or ETL workflow, you should be a little considerate or careful with how you are structuring that job. For instance, the Standard environment in Google App Engine will present you with a resource limit for your server calls. If your operations are known to take longer than, say, 10 minutes or so, you may be better off moving to the Flexible environment (which may be a little more expensive but certainly a little more powerful and a little less limited) or even moving that workflow to something like Google Compute Engine or another managed service.
Read full review
Google
Event-based data can be captured seamlessly from our data layers (and exported to Google BigQuery). When events like page-views, clicks, add-to-cart are tracked, Google BigQuery can help efficiently with running queries to observe patterns in user behaviour. That intermediate step of trying to "untangle" event data is resolved by Google BigQuery. A scenario where it could possibly be less appropriate is when analysing "granular" details (like small changes to a database happening very frequently).
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Pros
Google
  • Quick to develop, quick to deploy. You can be up and running on Google App Engine in no time.
  • Flexible. We use Java for some services and Node.js for others.
  • Great security features. We have been consistently impressed with the security and authentication features of Google App Engine.
Read full review
Google
  • Realtime integration with Google Sheets.
  • GSheet data can be linked to a BigQuery table and the data in that sheet is ingested in realtime into BigQuery. It's a live 'sync' which means it supports insertions, deletions, and alterations. The only limitation here is the schema'; this remains static once the table is created.
  • Seamless integration with other GCP products.
  • A simple pipeline might look like this:-
  • GForms -> GSheets -> BigQuery -> Looker
  • It all links up really well and with ease.
  • One instance holds many projects.
  • Separating data into datamarts or datameshes is really easy in BigQuery, since one BigQuery instance can hold multiple projects; which are isolated collections of datasets.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • There is a slight learning curve to getting used to code on Google App Engine.
  • Google Cloud Datastore is Google's NoSQL database in the cloud that your applications can use. NoSQL databases, by design, cannot give handle complex queries on the data. This means that sometimes you need to think carefully about your data structures - so that you can get the results you need in your code.
  • Setting up billing is a little annoying. It does not seem to save billing information to your account so you can re-use the same information across different Cloud projects. Each project requires you to re-enter all your billing information (if required)
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Google
  • Please expand the availability of documentation, tutorials, and community forums to provide developers with comprehensive support and guidance on using Google BigQuery effectively for their projects.
  • If possible, simplify the pricing model and provide clearer cost breakdowns to help users understand and plan for expenses when using Google BigQuery. Also, some cost reduction is welcome.
  • It still misses the process of importing data into Google BigQuery. Probably, by improving compatibility with different data formats and sources and reducing the complexity of data ingestion workflows, it can be made to work.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
App Engine is a solid choice for deployments to Google Cloud Platform that do not want to move entirely to a Kubernetes-based container architecture using a different Google product. For rapid prototyping of new applications and fairly straightforward web application deployments, we'll continue to leverage the capabilities that App Engine affords us.
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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.
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Usability
Google
I had to revisit the UI after a year of just setting up and forgetting. The UI got some improvements but the amount of navigation we have to go through to setup a new app has increased but also got easier to setup. Gemini now is integrated and make getting answers faster
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Google
I think overall it is easy to use. I haven't done anything from the development side but an more of an end user of reporting tables built in Google BigQuery. I connect data visualization tools like Tableau or Power BI to the BigQuery reporting tables to analyze trends and create complex dashboards.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
No answers on this topic
Google
I have never had any significant issues with Google Big Query. It always seems to be up and running properly when I need it. I cannot recall any times where I received any kind of application errors or unplanned outages. If there were any they were resolved quickly by my IT team so I didn't notice them.
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Performance
Google
No answers on this topic
Google
I think Google Big Query's performance is in the acceptable range. Sometimes larger datasets are somewhat sluggish to load but for most of our applications it performs at a reasonable speed. We do have some reports that include a lot of complex calculations and others that run on granular store level data that so sometimes take a bit longer to load which can be frustrating.
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Support Rating
Google
Good amount of documentation available for Google App Engine and in general there is large developer community around Google App Engine and other products it interacts with. Lastly, Google support is great in general. No issues so far with them.
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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.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
We were on another much smaller cloud provider and decided to make the switch for several reasons - stability, breadth of services, and security. In reviewing options, GCP provided the best mixtures of meeting our needs while also balancing the overall cost of the service as compared to the other major players in Azure and AWS.
Read full review
Google
PowerBI can connect to GA4 for example but the data processing is more complicated and it takes longer to create dashboards. Azure is great once the data import has been configured but it's not an easy task for small businesses as it is with BigQuery.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
No answers on this topic
Google
None so far. Very satisfied with the transparency on contract terms and pricing model.
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Scalability
Google
No answers on this topic
Google
We have continued to expand out use of Google Big Query over the years. I'd say its flexibility and scalability is actually quite good. It also integrates well with other tools like Tableau and Power BI. It has served the needs of multiple data sources across multiple departments within my company.
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Professional Services
Google
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.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • Effective employee adoption through ease of use.
  • Effective integration to other java based frameworks.
  • Time to market is very quick. Build, test, deploy and use.
  • The GAE Whitelist for java is an important resource to know what works and what does not. So use it. It would also be nice for Google to expand on items that are allowed on GAE platform.
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Google
  • Previously, running complex queries on our on-premise data warehouse could take hours. Google BigQuery processes the same queries in minutes. We estimate it saves our team at least 25% of their time.
  • We can target our marketing campaigns very easily and understand our customer behaviour. It lets us personalize marketing campaigns and product recommendations and experience at least a 20% improvement in overall campaign performance.
  • Now, we only pay for the resources we use. Saved $1 million annually on data infrastructure and data storage costs compared to our previous solution.
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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.