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Databases · head to head

BigQuery vs RisingWave

BigQuery logo

BigQuery

Databases

Google Cloud's serverless analytical warehouse, billed either by bytes scanned per query or by reserved compute slots.

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
RisingWave logo

RisingWave

Databases

Streaming database that maintains incremental materialised views in SQL instead of Flink jobs

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: BigQuery on-demand billing charges for bytes read from every column a query references, so an unqualified select or a missing partition filter turns a routine query into a large bill, and the cost is discovered after the fact rather than at review time.; RisingWave anything that does not fit SQL, such as custom windowing, complex event processing or heavy stateful logic, still needs Flink, so RisingWave often adds a system rather than removing one.
  • They diverge on capability: BigQuery covers Serverless compute, RisingWave covers SQL materialised views.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which BigQuery and RisingWave actually diverge.

Attributes where BigQuery and RisingWave differ
AttributeBigQueryRisingWave
Pricing modelusage-basedPer RisingWave Unit hour
PlatformsWeb, Cloud APILinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud
Founded2008Unknown

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in BigQuery

  • Serverless compute
  • Separation of storage and compute
  • Two pricing models
  • Partitioning and clustering
  • Materialised views
  • BigQuery ML
  • Storage Write API
  • BI Engine

Only in RisingWave

  • SQL materialised views
  • Postgres wire compatibility
  • Object storage state
  • Source connectors
  • Sink connectors
  • Iceberg tables
  • Watermarks and windowing
  • User defined functions

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

BigQuery

  • A warehouse for an organisation already on Google Cloud, where identity, logging and billing are consolidated in the same placenot RisingWave
  • Bursty analytical workloads with long idle periods, where paying per query beats keeping a cluster runningnot RisingWave
  • Event and clickstream analytics ingested continuously through the Storage Write API and queried without a load windownot RisingWave
  • Analytics teams with no infrastructure staff, where the absence of anything to tune or patch is worth more than dialect portabilitynot RisingWave

RisingWave

  • A team with Kafka topics that needs continuously fresh aggregates for a dashboard without standing up a Flink clusternot BigQuery
  • A fraud or risk team maintaining rolling counters and joins across event streams expressed as SQL viewsnot BigQuery
  • A company doing Postgres CDC into a real-time denormalised view for search or servingnot BigQuery
  • An analytics group that wants streaming results landed directly into Apache Iceberg without a separate writer jobnot BigQuery

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

BigQuery

  • On-demand billing charges for bytes read from every column a query references, so an unqualified select or a missing partition filter turns a routine query into a large bill, and the cost is discovered after the fact rather than at review time.
  • There is no way to join tables that live in different regions, so a data estate split across regions for residency reasons has to be reconciled with copies and the storage and transfer that implies.
  • It is not built for point lookups; retrieving a single row has latency measured in hundreds of milliseconds or more, so BigQuery cannot serve an application's read path and always needs a second store in front of it.
  • Frequent small mutations run into DML concurrency limits and the cost of rewriting storage blocks, so a workload that updates individual rows continuously behaves badly compared with an append-only design.
  • The compute exists only inside Google Cloud, so while tables can be exported, the accumulated GoogleSQL, scheduled queries, authorised views, ML models and IAM structure do not move, and switching warehouses is a rewrite of the analytical layer.

RisingWave

  • Anything that does not fit SQL, such as custom windowing, complex event processing or heavy stateful logic, still needs Flink, so RisingWave often adds a system rather than removing one.
  • The Apache 2.0 community edition excludes premium features behind a licence key, and which capabilities sit on which side of that line moves between releases, so a self-hosted plan can be invalidated by an upgrade.
  • Long-running materialised views accumulate state in object storage, and cost and recovery time grow with retention in ways that are hard to forecast before you are in production.
  • The Postgres compatibility is protocol level; it is not a transactional Postgres and using it as a general purpose database, with point updates or high write concurrency, goes badly.
  • It is a comparatively young venture-funded project competing with Flink, Materialize and warehouse-native streaming, and the ecosystem of connectors, operators and third-party expertise is much thinner.

Pricing, plan by plan

BigQuery

Free
  • Free TierFree
    • 1TB queries/month
    • 10GB storage/month
    • Standard support
  • On-demand$6.25/TB
    • Pay per query
    • Pay per storage
    • All features

RisingWave

Free
  • Community EditionFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence, self-hosted
    • Core streaming engine and connectors
    • Premium features excluded and require a licence key
  • Cloud Basic$0.227/hour
    • Billed per RisingWave Unit hour
    • Hosted on AWS, GCP or Azure
    • Capped at 64 cores
  • Cloud Pro$undefined/year
    • No core limit
    • Bring your own cloud option
    • Premium features included
  • Self-managed Enterprise$undefined/year
    • On premises or Kubernetes
    • Premium features unlocked by licence
    • Annual contract with SLA

Which should you pick?

Choose BigQuery if

  • You need serverless compute.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Cloud API.
  • You also want separation of storage and compute.
BigQuery review

Choose RisingWave if

  • You need sql materialised views.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
  • You also want postgres wire compatibility.
RisingWave review

Questions people ask

Is BigQuery or RisingWave better?
Neither clearly leads. BigQuery starts at Free and RisingWave at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, BigQuery or RisingWave?
BigQuery starts at Free and RisingWave at Free.
Does BigQuery or RisingWave run on more platforms?
BigQuery runs on Web, Cloud API. RisingWave runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
Can I use BigQuery for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is BigQuery best used for?
BigQuery is most often used for a warehouse for an organisation already on google cloud, where identity, logging and billing are consolidated in the same place, bursty analytical workloads with long idle periods, where paying per query beats keeping a cluster running, event and clickstream analytics ingested continuously through the storage write api and queried without a load window, analytics teams with no infrastructure staff, where the absence of anything to tune or patch is worth more than dialect portability. Of those, a warehouse for an organisation already on google cloud, where identity, logging and billing are consolidated in the same place and bursty analytical workloads with long idle periods, where paying per query beats keeping a cluster running are not what RisingWave is typically brought in for.
What can BigQuery do that RisingWave cannot?
BigQuery covers Serverless compute, Separation of storage and compute, Two pricing models, Partitioning and clustering. RisingWave covers SQL materialised views, Postgres wire compatibility, Object storage state, Source connectors.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

BigQuery: How is BigQuery actually billed?

Storage is billed separately from compute. Compute is either on-demand, priced by the bytes a query reads from the referenced columns, or capacity-based, where you reserve autoscaling slots. Most cost surprises come from on-demand queries that scan more than expected.

RisingWave: Is RisingWave open source?

The community edition is Apache 2.0 and self-hostable, but a set of premium features requires a paid licence key.

BigQuery: How do I control query cost?

Partition and cluster tables so queries prune data, select only the columns needed, use materialised views for repeated aggregations, and set maximum bytes billed on queries so a runaway scan fails instead of billing.

RisingWave: What does the cloud cost?

It starts at 0.227 US dollars per RisingWave Unit hour on the Basic tier, which is capped at 64 cores.

BigQuery: Can I use it without being on Google Cloud?

The service only runs on Google Cloud. BigQuery Omni can query data held in S3 or Azure storage, but the compute is still Google's and the account relationship is still with Google.

RisingWave: Does it replace Flink?

For SQL-expressible transformations, often yes. For custom stateful processing and complex event handling, no.

BigQuery: Is it suitable for serving application queries?

No. Latency for single-row reads is far too high. BigQuery is an analytical warehouse and application read paths need a transactional database or a cache in front of it.

RisingWave: Can I query it like Postgres?

Yes over the Postgres wire protocol, but it is an analytical streaming engine, not a transactional database.

BigQuery: When should I move from on-demand to capacity pricing?

When on-demand spend becomes both large and predictable, or when unpredictable spend is a bigger problem than query queueing. The switch trades a variable bill for a fixed one plus contention between workloads.

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