Bigquery + Datastudio is a great combo. But you might be able to just get away with a RDBMS. It depends on the types of queries you're running, and your time requirements. E. g. where I work there's a slightly larger than yours location polling table. About 200M rows plus for about 3 years of data. For distance and time aggregations of even monthly summaries, it's perfectly fast in a vanilla Postgres DB with some indexes. It'll take a bit longer for a year, but that's acceptable for reporting. And this isn't even a columnar database designed for analytical queries. Redshift would work fine too. I personally prefer GCP because I find it easier to work with, but YMMV. Answer from timmyz55 on reddit.com
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Integrate.io
integrate.io › blog › redshift-vs-bigquery-comprehensive-guide
Redshift vs BigQuery: The Key Differences | Integrate.io
July 21, 2025 - Google BigQuery? Both Amazon and Google have impressive data warehouses with RedShift and BigQuery. Each of these solutions can run analytics at-scale rapidly. We're not comparing apples and oranges here. This is apples to apples.
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Sprinkle Data
sprinkledata.com › blogs › redshift-vs-bigquery
Amazon Redshift vs Google BigQuery: A Comprehensive Comparison
February 19, 2024 - Redshift uses columnar storage, parallel query execution, and automatic compression to deliver fast query performance on massive datasets compared to other cloud data warehouses. ... BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse provided ...
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Stitch
stitchdata.com › resources › redshift-vs-bigquery
Amazon Redshift vs. Google BigQuery: a comparison | Stitch
Redshift provides 750 hours per month for two months for free, during which businesses can continuously run one DC2.Large node with 160GB of compressed SSD storage. BigQuery has two free tiers: one for storage (10GB) and one for analysis (1TB/month).
Address   1339 Chestnut St UNIT 1500, 19107, Philadelphia
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Firebolt
firebolt.io › comparison › bigquery-vs-redshift
BigQuery vs Redshift | Performance & Pricing: Comparison Guide
Redshift offers a serverless option which is based on an abstracted unit called Redshift Processing Unit (RPU) ranging from 8 to 512 in increments of 8. Each RPU provides 2 vCPU and 16GB RAM. Thus, 8 RPU is equivalent to 16 vCPU / 128GB RAM. The minimum RPU is 8. ... BigQuery scales very well to large data volumes, and automatically assigns more compute resources when needed behind the scenes, in the form of “slots”. BigQuery works either in an “on-demand pricing model”, where slot assignment is completely in the hands of BigQuery and the state of the shared resource pool, or in “flat-rate pricing model” where slots are reserved in advanced.
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DataCamp
datacamp.com › blog › bigquery-vs-redshift
BigQuery vs Redshift: Comparing Costs, Performance & Scalability | DataCamp
January 27, 2025 - BigQuery architecture (Source: Google Cloud blog). If you need more control over your infrastructure and can manage your clusters effectively, Amazon Redshift will be a better fit for you. Redshift requires you to set up and manage clusters by choosing the instance type, number of nodes, and ...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/dataengineering › redshift or bigquery for small analytics function - 30m rows, handful of connections, simple bi questions so far - which makes the most sense?
r/dataengineering on Reddit: Redshift or Bigquery for small analytics function - 30M rows, handful of connections, simple BI questions so far - which makes the most sense?
July 11, 2021 -

Started a new BI role at a company wanting to bring on analytics to answer basic questions around bookings, invoicing, ROI, support tickets, etc... I originally proposed Snowflake until I realized they have tiny data (30M rows) between three connectors (SFDC, Jira, Netsuite).

Company is in high acquisition mode and already made 2 acquisitions in 2021, but they still weren't larger companies.

I went back to the drawing board and realized I could by with Bigquery + Google Data Studio (I think, testing that out this week).

Also wondered about Redshift as far as cost, performance, etc.

I don't imagine this company surpassing 1B rows for a couple years at best. That being said, I think Bigquery would still work well given what I have trialed to date.

Should I also consider Redshift? How would I go about that evaluation? Thoughts?

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mParticle
mparticle.com › blog › bigquery-vs-redshift
BigQuery vs. Redshift: Which cloud data warehouse is right for you? - mParticle
The better your query performance, ... a benchmark study by research firm GigaOm, Redshift outperformed BigQuery by nearly five times with respect to query execution time and cost....
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Luzmo
luzmo.com › blog › bigquery-vs-redshift
BigQuery vs Redshift: Which Data Warehouse For Embedded Analytics? | Luzmo
The biggest difference between BigQuery and Redshift is how they handle managing resources. BigQuery has a serverless architecture, which means you don’t have to worry about adding more resources if your data grows - or reducing it when you ...
Find elsewhere
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Hevo
hevodata.com › home › learn › bigquery
Redshift vs BigQuery: 7 Critical Differences | Hevo
September 1, 2024 - Know more about Amazon Redshift from their official documentation. Google BigQuery is a fully managed and serverless data warehouse. It allows the analysis of petabytes of data. BigQuery also supports querying using ANSI SQL. It has machine learning capabilities.
Top answer
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I posted this comparison on reddit. Quickly enough a long term RedShift practitioner came to comment on my statements. Please see https://www.reddit.com/r/bigdata/comments/3jnam1/whats_your_preference_for_running_jobs_in_the_aws/cur518e for the full conversation.

Sizing your cluster:

  • Redshift will ask you to choose a number of CPUs, RAM, HD, etc. and to turn them on.
  • BigQuery doesn't care. Use it whenever you want, no provisioning needed.

Hourly costs when doing nothing:

  • Redshift will ask you to pay per hour of each of these servers running, even when you are doing nothing.
  • When idle BigQuery only charges you $0.02 per month per GB stored. 2 cents per month per GB, that's it.

Speed of queries:

  • Redshift performance is limited by the amount of CPUs you are paying for
  • BigQuery transparently brings in as many resources as needed to run your query in seconds.

Indexing:

  • Redshift will ask you to index (correction: distribute) your data under certain criteria, and you'll only be able to run fast queries based on this index.
  • BigQuery has no indexes. Every operation is fast.

Vacuuming:

  • Redshift requires periodic maintenance and 'vacuum' operations that last hours. You are paying for each of these server hours.
  • BigQuery does not. Forget about 'vacuuming'.

Data partitioning and distributing:

  • Redshift requires you to think about how to distribute data within your servers to keep performance up - optimization that works only for certain queries.
  • BigQuery does not. Just run whatever query you want.

Streaming live data:

  • Impossible(?) with Redshift.
  • BigQuery easily handles ingesting up to 100,000 rows per second per table.

Growing your cluster:

  • If you have more data, or more concurrent users scaling up will be painful with Redshift.
  • BigQuery will just work.

Multi zone:

  • You want a multi-zone Redshift for availability and data integrity? Painful.
  • BigQuery is multi-zoned by default.

To try BigQuery you don't need a credit card or any setup time. Just try it (quick instructions to try BigQuery).

When you are ready to put your own data into BigQuery, just copy your JSON new-line separated logs from to Google Cloud Storage and import them.

See this in depth guide to data warehouse pricing on the cloud: Understanding Cloud Pricing Part 3.2 - More Data Warehouses

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Amazon Redshift is a standard SQL database (based on Postgres) with MPP features that allow it to scale. These features also require you to conform your data model somewhat to get the best performance. It supports a large amount of the SQL standard and most tools that can speak to Postgres can use it unchanged.

BigQuery is not a database, in the sense that there it doesn't use standard SQL and doesn't provide JDBC/ODBC connectivity. It's a unique service with it's own API and interfaces. It provides limited support for SQL queries but most users interact with via custom code (Java, Python, etc.). Some 3rd party tools have added support for BigQuery but existing tools will not work without modification.

tl;dr - Redshift is better for interacting with existing tools and using complex SQL. BigQuery is better for custom coded interactions and teams who dislike SQL.

UPDATE 2017-04-17 - Here's a much more up to date summary of the cost and speed differences (wrapped in a sales pitch so YMMV). TL;DR - Redshift is usually faster and will be cheaper if you query the data somewhat regularly. http://blog.panoply.io/a-full-comparison-of-redshift-and-bigquery


UPDATE - Since I keep getting down votes on this () here's an up-to-date response to the items in the other answer:

Sizing your cluster:

  • Redshift allows you to tailor your costs to your usage. If you want the fastest possible queries choose SSD nodes and if you want the lowest possible cost per GB choose HDD nodes. Start small and add nodes whenever you want.

Hourly costs when doing nothing:

  • Redshift keeps your cluster ready for queries, can respond in milliseconds (result cache) and it provides a simple, predictable monthly bill.
  • For example, even if some script accidentally runs 10,000 giant queries over the weekend your Redshift bill will not increase at all.

Speed of queries:

  • Redshift performance is absolutely best in class and gets faster all the time. 3-5x faster in the last 6 months.

Indexing:

  • Redshift has no indexes. It allows you to define sort keys to optimize performance from fast to insanely fast.

Vacuuming:

  • Redshift now automatically runs routine maintenance such as ANALYZE and VACUUM DELETE when your cluster has free resource.

Data partitioning and distributing:

  • Redshift never requires distribution. It allows you to define distribution keys which can make even huge joins very fast.
  • {Ask competitors about join performance…}

Streaming live data:

  • Redshift has 2 choices
    • Stream real time data into Redshift using Amazon Kinesis Firehose.
    • Skip ingestion altogether by querying your real time instantly on S3 as soon as it land (and at high speeds) using Redshift Spectrum external tables.

Growing your cluster:

  • Redshift can elastically resize most clusters in a few minutes.

Multi zone:

  • Redshift seamlessly replaces any failed hardware and continuously backs up your data, including across regions if desired.
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Striim
striim.com › home › cloud data warehouse comparison: redshift vs bigquery vs azure vs snowflake for real-time workloads
Cloud Data Warehouse Comparison: Redshift vs BigQuery vs Azure vs Snowflake for Real-Time Workloads
June 11, 2021 - BigQuery is a serverless multi-cloud data warehouse offered by Google. The service can rapidly analyze terabytes to petabytes of data. Unlike Redshift, BigQuery doesn’t require upfront provisioning and automates various back-end operations such as data replication or scaling of compute resources.
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Polestar Analytics
polestaranalytics.com › blog › amazon-redshift-vs-bigquery-technical-comparison
Amazon Redshift vs. Google BigQuery: A comparison
Google BigQuery, on the other hand, shines in real-time data analytics and scenarios where rapid query execution is crucial. Its serverless architecture makes it an excellent choice for organizations looking for a low-maintenance, high-performance cloud-based data warehousing solution. ... Overall Data Strategy: Despite having capabilities to work in a hybrid cloud system, for organizations with a well-entrenched AWS infrastructure, Redshift can slot in seamlessly – leveraging existing VPCs, IAM roles, and data lake integrations.
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Medium
medium.com › 2359media › redshift-vs-bigquery-vs-snowflake-a-comparison-of-the-most-popular-data-warehouse-for-data-driven-cb1c10ac8555
Redshift vs BigQuery vs Snowflake: A comparison of the most popular data warehouse for data-driven digital transformation and data analytics within enterprises | by Elvin Li | 2359media | Medium
June 4, 2020 - In terms of pricing, Redshift is more predictable as resources are already predetermined, Snowflake is also easily measurable as it is dependent on time spent while BigQuery is harder to predict as query resource required varies unless you are ...
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Astera
astera.com › home › blog › bigquery vs. redshift: which one should you choose?
BigQuery vs. Redshift: Which One Should You Choose? | Astera
March 21, 2024 - Firstly, BigQuery operates on a serverless architecture, while Redshift offers greater overall control. In BigQuery, Google manages all the aspects of the warehouse, including provisioning, scaling, and maintenance.
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Draxlr
draxlr.com › blogs › redshift-vs-bigquery-comparing-the-best-data-warehouses
Redshift vs. BigQuery: Comparing the Best Data Warehouses
August 11, 2022 - Google BigQuery so that you can draw a constructive conclusion. Redshift is an impressive, fully managed data warehousing solution by Amazon that can store data ranging from a few gigabytes to a petabyte or more, depending on the business requirements. The key highlights of Redshift include parallel processing and data compression, which allow it to process as many as a billion rows simultaneously.
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › gblog › aws-redshift-vs-google-bigquery
AWS Redshift vs Google BigQuery: Top Differences - GeeksforGeeks
July 23, 2025 - BigQuery uses distributed architecture for parallelization so you can run queries on any amount of data faster. To top it all off, this serves as another vector for integrating with other Google Cloud services as well as with widely used analytics software such as Looker or Tableau thereby enabling multiple processing scenarios like warehousing, advanced analytics, machine learning, etc. ... AWS Redshift and Google BigQuery stand as two prominent players in cloud-based data warehousing solutions, each offering different features and functionalities required for distinct analytical needs.
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Symphony Solutions
symphony-solutions.com › symphony solutions › bigquery vs redshift: comparing cloud data warehouse solutions
BigQuery vs Redshift: Comparing Cloud Data Warehouse Solutions | Symphony Solutions
July 18, 2024 - A user might also need a leader ... with multiple nodes. BigQuery is an extension of the larger Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure and serves as a cloud warehouse solution for businesses....
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AWS
aws.amazon.com › blogs › big-data › fact-or-fiction-google-big-query-outperforms-amazon-redshift-as-an-enterprise-data-warehouse
Fact or Fiction: Google BigQuery Outperforms Amazon Redshift as an Enterprise Data Warehouse? | Amazon Web Services
October 12, 2020 - To verify Google’s claim with our own testing, we ran the full TPC-H benchmark, consisting of all 22 queries, using a 10 TB dataset on Amazon Redshift against the latest version of BigQuery. We set up Amazon Redshift with basic configurations that our customers typically put in place, like compression, distribution keys on large tables, and sort keys on commonly filtered columns.
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Airbyte
airbyte.com › data integration platform › data engineering resources › bigquery vs. redshift: comparing two leading data warehouse solutions
BigQuery vs Redshift: Choosing the Right Data Warehouse for Your Needs | Airbyte
June 9, 2025 - Architecture: BigQuery operates on a serverless model, abstracting infrastructure management, while Redshift requires manual cluster management, offering more control over resources.
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Quora
quora.com › What-are-the-similarities-and-differences-between-Google-BigQuery-and-Amazon-Redshift-Which-one-is-better-for-data-analysis-purposes
What are the similarities and differences between Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift? Which one is better for data analysis purposes? - Quora
Answer: BigQuery and Redshift both manage large datawarehouses. Key difference is - When you use RedShift - you provision cluster and nodes. You get charge for these. When you use BigQuery - it is serverless.