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BigQuery vs IBM Db2 Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BigQuery
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd)
IBM Db2 Warehouse
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

Mikah Sellers - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal at Sgt Suds
Has supported detailed policy and education analysis with low-code data exploration
I do not use AWS as my main cloud provider within the company and am not currently using it with AWS. My company did not buy it through the AWS Marketplace as I'm the founder of the company. I do not use BigQuery's integration with Google Analytics for custom behavior analysis. I have not utilized the geospatial analysis capabilities with BigQuery as I'm doing mostly human capital work, so geospatial wouldn't make sense. I would rate their service on a scale of one to 10 for Google as ten. I would rate BigQuery as nine out of 10. My experience with the pricing for BigQuery was through a grant from Google. Their pricing is fairly priced and pretty comparable to Microsoft's offering. I haven't had direct experience, but I did look at the pricing of the Microsoft offering and it's pretty similar. I do not deal with Google AI tools such as Vertex.
Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Using BigQuery's central repository brings dispersed information together, which facilitates exploring the data and gaining insights, and consequently, it improves operations, response time, and the business overall."
"We can analyze terabytes of data in a very small amount of time."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The initial setup is simple."
"I like that we can synch and run a large query. I also like that we can work with a large amount of data. You don't need to work separately, as it's a ready-made solution. It also comes with a built-in machine-learning feature. Once we start inputting the data, it will suggest some things related to the data, and we can come up with nice dashboards and statistics from a vast amount of data."
"It has a well-structured suite of complimentary tools for data integration and so forth."
"To be frank, the performance, reliability, and everything else have improved, even the downtime."
"The scalability is excellent, as it can handle large datasets and scale up pretty easily as the data volume grows while remaining very reliable with no bugs, glitches, crashes, or freezes."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution works with big data, so it's pretty scalable."
"The initial setup was really easy; it's Docker compliant, you just pull the image from the IBM repository and that's it, and the deployment must have taken less than an hour, making it really fast to have it completely working."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
 

Cons

"I noticed recently it's more expensive now."
"I am unsure of the scalability because I need to test it with a bigger project."
"Some of the queries are complex and difficult to understand."
"There is a limitation when copying data directly from BigQuery; it only supports up to ten MB when copying data to the clipboard."
"It can be slower and more problematic compared to other platforms such as Snowflake."
"We would like to be able to calibrate the solution to run on top of a raw file."
"With what I have seen in BigQuery, I had some response times problems, but then it is an analytical database and not a transactional database, so it comes with eventual consistency."
"The solution hinges on Google patterns so continued improvement is important."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a five. It is fairly bad."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"I previously used DataStage, which I think is better than InfoSphere Warehouse."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is pretty affordable and quite cheap in comparison to PDP or Cloudera."
"Price-wise, I think that is very reasonable."
"The product operates on a pay-for-use model. Costs include storage and query execution, which can accumulate based on data volume and complexity."
"The pricing is adaptable, ensuring that organizations can tailor their usage and costs based on their specific requirements and configurations within the Google Cloud Platform."
"Its cost structure operates on a pay-as-you-go model."
"The product’s pricing could be more flexible for end users."
"The price is a bit high but the technology is worth it."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Media Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigQuery?
I believe the cost of BigQuery is competitive versus the alternatives in the market, but it can become expensive if the tool is not used properly. It is on a per-consumption basis, the billing, so ...
What needs improvement with BigQuery?
With what I have seen in BigQuery, I had some response times problems, but then it is an analytical database and not a transactional database, so it comes with eventual consistency. I cannot have e...
What is your primary use case for BigQuery?
We are mostly dealing with Google solutions such as BigQuery, NoSQL, SQL analytical database, secrets manager, and most of the serverless infrastructure as well, databases. I run SQL queries on Big...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
 

Also Known As

BQ
InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: June 2026.
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