DBMS > Amazon Redshift vs. Google BigQuery vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Amazon Redshift vs. Google BigQuery vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Large scale data warehouse service for use with business intelligence tools

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	14.15
Rank	#37	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	60.73
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	168.09
Rank	#6	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/redshift

cloud.google.com/bigquery

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Amazon (based on PostgreSQL)

Google

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2010

2014

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Server operating systems

hosted

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

does not fully support an SQL-standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in Python

user defined functions

in JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

informational only, not enforced by the system

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

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16 January 2025, Tom Russell

Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year
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Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021
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Recent citations in the news

Integrate ThoughtSpot with Amazon Redshift using AWS IAM Identity Center
10 April 2025, Amazon Web Services

Amazon Redshift enhances security by changing default behavior in 2025
30 January 2025, Amazon Web Services

Enhance Agentforce data security with Private Connect for Salesforce Data Cloud and Amazon Redshift – Part 3
7 April 2025, Amazon Web Services

Recap of Amazon Redshift key product announcements in 2024
17 December 2024, Amazon Web Services

Using Amazon S3 Tables with Amazon Redshift to query Apache Iceberg tables | Amazon Web Services
24 March 2025, Amazon Web Services

provided by Google News

Winning the 2020 Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year – Infrastructure Modernization Award
22 December 2021, cio.com

Hightouch Announces $38 Million in Funding and Launches New Customer 360 Toolkit
19 July 2023, PR Newswire

Redshift Vs BigQuery: What Are The Factors To Consider Before Choosing A Data Warehouse
13 December 2018, Analytics India Magazine

provided by Google News

Snowflake for Applications & Collaboration | AI Data Cloud
10 April 2025, Snowflake

Snowflake Achieves Department of Defense IL5 Authorization, Furthering Position as the Trusted AI Data Cloud for Government and Defense Customers
10 April 2025, Business Wire

IBM Buys Snowflake-Focused Data, AI Consultancy Hakkoda
7 April 2025, CRN Magazine

Snowflake Unistore
10 April 2025, Snowflake

provided by Google News

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