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BigQuery vs Microsoft Parallel Data 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.2
BigQuery offers major cost savings and performance improvements, providing a strong ROI despite initial training costs and minimal documentation.
Sentiment score
4.9
Users find Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse effective in managing data, integrating tools, with ROI potential despite indirect tracking.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
BigQuery users find customer service varies, with premium users pleased but lower-tiered users facing access challenges and delays.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support is generally positive with responsive service, though some suggest enhancements in speed and Azure expertise.
rating the customer support at ten points out of ten
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
I have been self-taught and I have been able to handle all my problems alone.
Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
I would rate their customer service pretty good on a scale of one to 10, as they gave me access to the platform on a grant.
Principal at Sgt Suds
They are responsive and get back to us.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate my experience with technical support around six on a scale of 1 to 10 because I have not had a particular experience with technical support.
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
BigQuery efficiently manages large datasets with cloud-based infrastructure and auto-scaling, despite occasional performance and cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is scalable with SQL benefits, but may lag behind Snowflake in large data handling.
It is a 10 out of 10 in terms of scalability.
Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
We have not seen problems with scaling.
Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
The scalability is definitely good because we are migrating to the cloud since the computers on the premises or the big database we need are no longer enough.
Expert Analyst at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We go from a couple of users to tons of users all the time, and it scales and handles things really well.
Service Desk Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
As a consultant, we hire additional programmers when we need to scale up certain major projects.
Associate Director at Sequentis
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
BigQuery is highly stable and reliable, efficiently handling large data with strong support, though improvements are suggested.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable, reliable, handles large volumes well, with occasional speed issues on vast datasets.
In the past one and a half years that I have been running with BigQuery, I have not needed to raise any technical support with BigQuery or with Google.
Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

BigQuery users want better user-friendliness, integrations, cost efficiency, advanced AI features, and simplified data handling for large datasets.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse needs better tool integration, scalability, compatibility, frequent updates, competitive pricing, and enhanced error messaging.
Improvement is needed in the sense that the AI model behind BigQuery should understand sometimes what the enterprise architecture is and how efficiently we can write queries.
Senior Manager - Consulting & Alliances at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Troubleshooting requires opening each pipeline individually, which is time-consuming.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
In general, if I know SQL and start playing around, it will start making sense.
Expert Analyst at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It would be better to release patches less frequently, maybe once a month or once every two months.
Associate Director at Sequentis
Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement.
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
Computer engineer at a engineering company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

BigQuery's competitive pricing offers cost flexibility, but query costs can rise without proper optimization, making planning essential.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers competitive pricing, suitable for large enterprises, but can be costly for high-performance needs.
Being able to optimize the queries to data is critical. Otherwise, you could spend a fortune.
Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
The price is perceived as expensive, rated at eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

BigQuery offers a scalable, cost-effective solution with AI, machine learning, fast response, and seamless tool integration for data analysis.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse boosts data loads, integrates with Power BI, and offers scalable BI with minimal costs.
It is really fast because it can process millions of rows in just a matter of one or two seconds.
Expert Analyst at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We were able to save 60% of our time that used to go into writing SQL queries.
Senior Manager - Consulting & Alliances at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
BigQuery processes a substantial amount of data, whether in gigabytes or terabytes, swiftly producing desired data within one or two minutes.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
The columnstore index enhances data query performance by using less space and achieving faster performance than general indexing.
BI/Data Warehouse Analyst at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is used in the logistics area for optimizing SQL queries related to the loading and unloading of trucks.
Architecture at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
There's a feature that allows users to set alerts on triggers within reports, enabling timely actions on pending applications and effectively reducing waiting time.
Associate Director at Sequentis
 

Categories and Ranking

BigQuery
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd)
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
 

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.
HassanFatemi - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Smart Data-Driven Solutions
Has handled large volumes of data effectively but still needs cost flexibility
There could be improvements on the cost side of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse because it is still considered to be quite expensive by a lot of users, and many companies are not interested in solutions with parallel data warehousing due to this expense. Addressing the cost would be the number one area for improvement. Additionally, I have not worked recently with it, so I don't know if this feature already exists, but if it doesn't, having an elastic feature that adjusts the service's power dynamically based on the workload would be beneficial instead of fixing the power at a specific level.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Media Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise22
 

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?
The queries that BigQuery provides are not optimized at a greater level. For simple tasks it is good, but if I want to write complex analyzing queries, it doesn't give the queries up to the mark, s...
What is your primary use case for BigQuery?
My main use case for BigQuery is the analysis of our data, creating dashboards from large datasets, and querying the databases that we have, including both structured and unstructured data imported...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The pricing could be better; I think it actually just went up.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
The basic use case for us is virtual machines. In real estate, we use it for our operations. They handle large data sets well, and the performance is good during those times.
 

Also Known As

BQ
Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.