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BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of BigQuery is 7.8%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BigQuery7.8%
SAP Business Warehouse2.3%
Other89.9%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Luís Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technical Lead at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Handles large data sets efficiently and offers flexible data management capabilities
The features I find most valuable in this solution are the ability to run and handle large data sets in a very efficient way with multiple types of data, relational as SQL data. It is kind of difficult to explain, but structured data and the ability to handle large data sets are key features. The data integration capabilities in BigQuery were, in fact, an issue at the beginning. There are two types of integrations. As long as integration is within Google, it is pretty simple. When you start to try to connect external clients to that data, it becomes more complex. It is not related to BigQuery, it is related to Google security model, which is not easy to manage. I would not call it an integration issue of BigQuery, I would call it an integration issue of Google security model.
VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai
Have encountered complexity with programming language while working on large-scale data integration and have experienced improved governance and reporting
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehouse, I would to see added features that simplify the product very well now. They are coming up with a terminology called SAP BDC where they are consolidating their tools, SAP Data Sphere for integration and SAP BW for the ETL and warehousing parts, and SAP Analytics Cloud. They are packaging these three features and calling it Business Data Cloud; they are fully coming on the cloud. We have to wait and watch; they have been speaking about BW/4HANA for quite some time now, but the customers or clients I work with are not finding great interest and it was seen as a candidate for evaluation. I have seen people looking at the latest technologies who are already on cloud who started building from scratch on cloud, such as Snowflake or Databricks, which can process very huge amounts of data and also address unstructured data, where SAP lags behind in cases where there is a need to bring in unstructured data. I have worked with SAP Data Intelligence, which earlier used to be called SAP Data Hub. The unstructured data is not greatly handled in SAP at this point in time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"BigQuery allows for very fast access, and it is efficient in handling large datasets compared to other SQL databases."
"What I like most about BigQuery is that it's fast and flexible. Another advantage of BigQuery is that it's easy to learn."
"The integrated data storage features are good."
"BigQuery processes a substantial amount of data, whether in gigabytes or terabytes, swiftly producing desired data within one or two minutes."
"The most valuable aspect of BigQuery is its ability to handle high data workloads without causing friction with our online systems."
"It's straightforward to set up."
"BigQuery's querying capabilities are very optimized for large datasets."
"BigQuery excels at structuring data, performing predictions, and conducting insightful analyses and it leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, powered by Google's Duarte AI."
"The product is very stable."
"Now, because of the HANA integration, the hard disk and RAM are together, and because of that, the output is very quick and very fast actually."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
"The real-time information is great."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."
"I like that it integrates to open-source."
"The most useful feature is definitely the speed."
 

Cons

"It would be better if BigQuery didn't have huge restrictions. For example, when we migrate from on-premises to on-premise, the data which handles all ebook characters can be handled on-premise. But in BigQuery, we have huge restrictions. If we have some symbols, like a hash or other special characters, it won't accept them. Not in all cases, but it won't accept a few special characters, and when we migrate, we get errors. We need to use Regexp or something similar to replace that with another character. This isn't expected from a high-range technology like BigQuery. It has to adapt all products. For instance, if we have a TV Showroom, the TV symbol will be there in the shop name. Teradata and Apache Spark accept this, but BigQuery won't. This is the primary concern that we had. In the next release, it would be better if the query on the external table also had cache. Right now, we are using a GCS bucket, and in the native table, we have cache. For example, if we query the same table, it won't cost because it will try to fetch the records from the cached result. But when we run queries on the external table a number of times, it won't be cached. That's a major drawback of BigQuery. Only the native table has the cache option, and the external table doesn't. If there is an option to have an external table for cache purposes, it'll be a significant advantage for our organization."
"The primary hurdle in this migration lies in the initial phase of moving substantial volumes of data to cloud-based platforms."
"So our challenge in Yemen is convincing many people to go to cloud services."
"Some of the queries are complex and difficult to understand."
"When I execute a query, the dashboard doesn't always present the output seamlessly."
"When I execute a query, the dashboard doesn't always present the output seamlessly. Troubleshooting requires opening each pipeline individually, which is time-consuming."
"There are many tools that you have to use with BigQuery that are different services also provided for by Google. They need to all be integrated into BigQuery to make the solution easier to use."
"The processing capability can be an area of improvement."
"We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is cheaper compared to other solutions."
"Its cost structure operates on a pay-as-you-go model."
"1 TB is free of cost monthly. If you use more than 1 TB a month, then you need to pay 5 dollars extra for each TB."
"The price could be better. Usually, you need to buy the license for a year. Whenever you want more, you can subscribe to it, and you can use it. Otherwise, you can terminate the license. You can use it daily or monthly, and we use it based on a project's requirements."
"The pricing is good and there are no additional costs involved."
"BigQuery is inexpensive."
"The solution is pretty affordable and quite cheap in comparison to PDP or Cloudera."
"BigQuery pricing can increase quickly. It's a high-priced solution."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"The licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse depends on your revenue. Its licensing structure is a little bit complicated. The more your revenue is, the higher the price, but SAP does have different pricing structures for various companies. For small businesses, licensing isn't based on revenue, but for big companies, it's revenue-based. There's some agreement regarding pricing for huge companies, so it's different, and SAP Business Warehouse pricing isn't fixed. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse as five because it's very high. As your revenue grows, your licensing cost also increases, so you have to factor that in when calculating your cost."
"It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Media Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BigQuery?
The initial setup process is easy.
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?
There are areas that could be improved with BigQuery, such as more bolt-on capabilities and the ability to use more bolt-ons for APIs. Having more of a library of connectors would be really benefic...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The pricing for SAP Business Warehouse is on the expensive side. I am not sure about the current costing model as such. In my experience on cloud, I did not use BW HANA Cloud. I used the cloud prod...
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehou...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about BigQuery vs. SAP Business Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.