Data platforms, side by side.

Data Intelligence Platform (lakehouse)

Cloud data warehouse / AI Data Cloud

Serverless warehouse; lakehouse via BigLake

SaaS suite over lakehouse + warehouse

Apache Spark + Photon

Proprietary vectorized SQL engine

Dremel (proprietary engine)

Spark for engineering; Polaris/T-SQL warehouse

Decoupled storage and compute

Fully decoupled storage and compute

Fully decoupled (Colossus + Dremel)

Yes, compute separate from OneLake

Delta Lake (and managed Iceberg)

Proprietary micro-partitions (FDN)

Proprietary (Capacitor columnar)

Delta Lake (Parquet) in OneLake

Native managed Iceberg, read+write GA

Native Iceberg, read+write

Managed Iceberg tables, read+write

Read+write via virtualization/XTable, Table APIs

Native Delta read/write

Read via external/Iceberg, no native write

Read via BigLake external tables

Native read/write, default format

Unity Catalog Iceberg REST catalog

Open Catalog (Apache Polaris, Iceberg REST)

Iceberg REST catalog (BigLake)

OneLake catalog; Iceberg REST APIs (preview)

Spark, Delta, Unity Catalog open source

Engine closed; Polaris/Arctic open

Engine proprietary; Iceberg format open

Spark/Delta open; warehouse engine proprietary

AWS, Azure, GCP

AWS, Azure, GCP

GCP native; AWS/Azure via BigQuery Omni

Azure-only SaaS; shortcuts to AWS/GCP

Runs in your cloud account

SaaS-only managed service

SaaS-only (Google Cloud managed)

SaaS-only (Azure-hosted)

Per-DBU

Per-credit consumption

On-demand per-TB or slot capacity

Capacity Units (F-SKUs)

Per-second

Per-second, 60-second minimum

Per-second, 1-minute minimum (slots)

Per-second compute, billed hourly

Serverless SQL/compute, auto-suspend

Auto-suspend warehouses + serverless compute

Serverless; editions autoscale to zero

Pause/resume capacity; autoscale billing

Classic: separate VM bill; serverless bundled

Bundled; no separate cloud VM bill

Compute/storage billed by BigQuery directly

Capacity billed apart from OneLake storage

No Databricks storage charge; cloud bills it

~$23/TB-month on-demand (AWS US East)

~$0.02/GB-mo active; $0.01 long-term

OneLake ~$0.023/GB-month (~$23/TB)

Free Edition + 14-day trial

30-day free trial with credits

1 TB queries + 10 GB storage/month

60-day free trial capacity

Committed-use contracts

Pre-paid capacity discounts

1yr/3yr capacity commitments discounted

Reserved capacity ~41% off PAYG

System tables, usage dashboards, budgets

Cost views, budgets, resource monitors

Cost dashboards, slot/admin monitoring

Capacity Metrics app; cost management

List DBU prices published

List credit/storage prices published

List prices published publicly

List prices published per SKU

ANSI SQL incl. window, recursive CTE

Broad ANSI SQL, window + recursive CTE

GoogleSQL; window + recursive CTE

T-SQL warehouse; CTEs, window functions

Native VARIANT and JSON support

Native VARIANT/JSON/Avro/Parquet

Native JSON data type

JSON in T-SQL; VARIANT in Spark

Spatial SQL GA, GEOMETRY/GEOGRAPHY, H3

GEOGRAPHY + GEOMETRY types and functions

GEOGRAPHY type + GIS functions

ArcGIS GeoAnalytics partner; KQL geo

SQL, Python, Scala, Java UDFs

SQL, Python, Java, Scala UDFs

SQL, JavaScript, Python UDFs

T-SQL, Python, Spark UDFs; user data functions

Native materialized views

Native materialized views

Native materialized views

Materialized Lake Views (Delta)

Query result caching

Persisted query result cache

Automatic query result cache

Warehouse result-set caching

Lakehouse Federation

External tables; limited live federation

Cloud SQL, Spanner, external sources

Shortcuts + mirroring virtualize sources

Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines, Jobs

Snowpark, Streams, Tasks, Openflow

Dataform, Dataflow, Data Transfer Service

Data Factory pipelines + dataflows

Structured Streaming, Real-Time Mode

Snowpipe Streaming, up to 10 GB/s

Storage Write API streaming ingest

Real-Time Intelligence eventstreams

CDC via APPLY CHANGES, Lakeflow Connect

Streams; Openflow CDC connectors

Native CDC ingest; Datastream

Copy Job CDC; open mirroring (GA)

Auto Loader

Snowpipe auto-ingest

Datastream/Data Transfer Service auto-load

Copy Job; eventstream file ingest

Lakeflow Jobs

Native Tasks scheduler / DAGs

Scheduled queries, Dataform workflows

Data Factory pipeline scheduler

First-class dbt adapter and task

First-class dbt adapter

First-class dbt adapter

dbt adapters for Warehouse and Lakehouse

Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines

Dynamic Tables declarative pipelines

Dataform SQL declarative pipelines

Materialized Lake Views declarative ETL

Native training on Spark/GPU clusters

Snowflake ML native training (CPU/GPU)

BigQuery ML trains models in SQL

Native notebooks + Spark training

Native feature store in Unity Catalog

Native Snowflake Feature Store

Vertex AI Feature Store on BigQuery

No dedicated managed feature store

Managed MLflow

Managed MLflow integration

Vertex AI Experiments (separate product)

Native MLflow experiment tracking

Mosaic AI Model Serving

Model Serving on Container Services

Serving via Vertex AI integration

Real-time ML model endpoints

AutoML

Partial automation, no full AutoML product

AutoML models in BigQuery ML

AutoML via FLAML

Mosaic AI Vector Search

Native VECTOR type + Cortex Search

Native vector index + VECTOR_SEARCH

Native vector type in SQL DB; AI functions

Mosaic AI Gateway (multi-model)

Cortex AI hosts multiple LLMs

Gemini via ML.GENERATE_TEXT/AI functions

AI Foundry models; Copilot FM access

AI/BI Genie

Cortex Analyst NL-to-SQL

Gemini SQL generation in editor

Copilot NL-to-SQL in warehouse/notebooks

Mosaic AI Agent Framework, managed MCP

Cortex Agents + managed MCP server

Data agents + BigQuery MCP server

Data agents; Fabric MCP servers

GPU instances for ML

GPU compute pools (Container Services)

GPUs via Vertex AI, not native BQ

No native GPU Spark pools

AI/BI Dashboards

Streamlit apps + dashboards in Snowsight

BI Engine; Looker Studio dashboards

Power BI dashboards built in

Unity Catalog Metric Views

Semantic views

Semantic layer via Looker (separate)

Power BI semantic models; Fabric IQ

Native notebooks

Native Snowflake Notebooks

Native notebooks in BigQuery Studio

Native Spark/Python notebooks

AI/BI Genie natural-language

Cortex Analyst ask-your-data

Data Canvas natural-language analytics

Copilot Q&A on Power BI reports

Tableau, Power BI, Looker connectors

Tableau, Power BI, Looker connectors

Tableau, Power BI, Looker connectors

Power BI native; Tableau via connector

Unity Catalog across data and AI

Horizon Catalog across data + AI

Dataplex / Universal Catalog

OneLake catalog + Purview governance

Fine-grained RBAC in Unity Catalog

Role-based access control

IAM roles, fine-grained permissions

Workspace roles + OneLake item RBAC

ABAC with governed tags, GA

Tag-based masking/policies

Policy tags / taxonomy-based access

Purview sensitivity labels; limited ABAC

Dynamic column masks

Dynamic data masking

Dynamic data masking via policy tags

Dynamic data masking; column-level security

Row filters

Row access policies

Row-level access policies

Row-level security in warehouse/Power BI

Automatic lineage in Unity Catalog

Automatic data lineage (Horizon)

Automatic lineage via Dataplex

Automatic lineage view + Purview

Automated data classification GA

Automatic sensitive-data classification

Automatic PII discovery via Dataplex

Purview auto PII classification + labels

Audit logs / system tables

Access History / audit logs

Cloud Audit Logs for access

Purview/M365 audit logs

Customer-managed keys

Tri-Secret Secure customer-managed keys

CMEK via Cloud KMS

Customer-managed keys (workspace encryption)

PrivateLink, VNet/VPC injection

PrivateLink / Private Link networking

VPC Service Controls, Private Service Connect

Private Link + managed VNet

Delta Sharing (cross-cloud)

Secure cross-cloud data sharing

BigQuery sharing / Analytics Hub

External data sharing across tenants

Clean Rooms GA

Native Data Clean Rooms

Native data clean rooms

No native Fabric clean rooms

Databricks Marketplace

Snowflake Marketplace (3,400+ listings)

Google Cloud Marketplace / data exchanges

Azure Marketplace; Fabric workload hub

Status page with RSS/email subscribe

Statuspage with JSON status API

Google Cloud status dashboard published

Azure Status page; Service Health API

Published uptime SLA (99.95% serverless)

99.9% SLA (99.99% target)

99.99% uptime SLA published

99.9% uptime SLA

Cluster autoscaling

Multi-cluster elastic auto-scaling

Autoscaling slots in editions

Autoscale billing; Spark autoscale pools

DR guidance; not automatic replication

Cross-region replication and failover

Cross-region dataset replication, multi-region

Availability zones; multi-geo; BCDR

Separate warehouses/clusters per workload

Separate virtual warehouses per workload

Reservations isolate ETL vs BI

Separate capacities per workload

Lakeflow Connect 100+ sources

Openflow + broad partner connectors

Data Transfer Service + partner connectors

200+ Data Factory connectors

SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, ISO

SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, FedRAMP, ISO

SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO, PCI, FedRAMP

SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP, ISO, PCI

Dozens of regions across AWS/Azure/GCP

Global regions across AWS/Azure/GCP

40+ Google Cloud regions

Azure public regions worldwide

Tiered support plans

Standard, Premier, Business Critical

Standard, Enhanced, Premium support

Basic, Pro Direct, Premier/Unified