Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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)
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Standard edition
$0.04 / slot hour
Enterprise edition
$0.06 / slot hour
Enterprise Plus edition
$0.10 / slot hour
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
Google BigQuery
Chose Google BigQuery
At my previous organization we used server based SQL server. There were days when the server was down and we couldn't work or access the data. This caused multiple reports and processes which were fed from the server to fail. Google BigQuery doesn't have such problems.
Chose Google BigQuery
We liked BQ because the cost of it is only dependent on the amount of data you store (and there are tiers of data access) and how much you search. For us, it is significantly less expensive to run BQ than an equivalent hosted RDBMS. Because most of our data pipelines are …
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
There are lots of players in this space these days, but Microsoft and AWS are the two most visible and easiest to get connected with. We were using AWS first, and have been using both for some time, but have now converted entirely over to Azure just for the ease of management, …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google BigQuery
8.4
50 Ratings
4% below category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Automatic software patching8.117 Ratings00 Ratings
Database scalability8.850 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated backups8.524 Ratings00 Ratings
Database security provisions8.743 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics8.445 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic host deployment8.113 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google BigQuery
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.6
17 Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.716 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.316 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings7.016 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings9.516 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.715 Ratings
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Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
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User Ratings
Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(50 ratings)
8.5
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(3 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(9 ratings)
8.8
(27 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google BigQueryMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
For organizations looking to avoid the overhead of managing infrastructure, BigQuery's server-less architecture allows teams to focus on analyzing data without worrying about server maintenance or capacity planning. Small projects or startups with limited data analysis needs and tight budgets might find other solutions more cost-effective. Also, it is not suitable for OLTP systems.
Read full review
Microsoft
In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
Read full review
Pros
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
Microsoft
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • Can't use it out of Google's cloud platform which is a minus point if you want a local setup.
  • Can be a little expensive to manage.
  • A little difficult to manage someone with less technical expertise as it requires you to have SQL knowledge of joins, CTEs etc.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
Read full review
Usability
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
Microsoft
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Support Rating
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
Microsoft
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Google
Google's Firebase isn't a competitor but we had to use Google's BigQuery because Google's Firebase's database is limited compared to Google's BigQuery. Linking your Firebase project to BigQuery lets you access your raw, unsampled event data along with all of your parameters and user properties. Highly recommend connecting the two if you have a mobile app.
Read full review
Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
None so far. Very satisfied with the transparency on contract terms and pricing model.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
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
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Google
  • Google BigQuery has had enormous impact in terms of ROI to our business, as it has allowed us to ease our dependence on our physical servers, which we pay for monthly from another hosting service. We have been able to run multiple enterprise scale data processing applications with almost no investment
  • Since our business is highly client focused, Google Cloud Platform, and BigQuery specifically, has allowed us to get very granular in how our usage should be attributed to different projects, clients, and teams.
  • Plain and simple, I believe the meager investments that we have made in Google BigQuery have paid themselves back hundreds of times over.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Brings down Capex to customers.
  • Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers.
  • Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure.
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.