# Google BigQuery vs ClickHouse Cloud

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/bigquery-vs-clickhouse-cloud/

Every value below is read from Google BigQuery's and ClickHouse Cloud's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Google BigQuery | ClickHouse Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| What the free plan includes | 1 tebibyte of query data processed a month and 10 gibibytes of storage, both renewing monthly rather than expiring. The only standing free allowance of the four — the others offer a trial or a credit. | Trial credits over a 30-day window, drawn down until they are depleted or the window closes, whichever comes first. Adding a card during the trial does not end it — the credits keep being consumed first. A time-boxed credit rather than a standing allowance, which is the opposite of BigQuery's tebibyte renewing every month. |
| Entry paid plan | Nothing until the second tebibyte. Queries are $6.25 per tebibyte scanned above the free tier, with no cluster, node or plan fee underneath — the only member here where a small workload genuinely costs zero. | From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity. |
| Pricing model | Two compute models. On-demand bills the bytes each query processes, at $6.25 per tebibyte. Capacity bills slot-hours — reserved virtual CPUs — regardless of what the queries read. The first model punishes unselective queries and the second punishes idle capacity, and the choice is made per account rather than per query. | Compute, storage and data transfer itemised separately, with compute varying by how many hours a day the service is active — $39.91, $79.83 or $159.66 in the published example for 6, 12 or 24 hours, against a flat $25.30 of storage. Scale, the always-on auto-scaling tier, starts at $499.38 a month. |

## Where they differ

### What the free plan includes

- Google BigQuery: 1 tebibyte of query data processed a month and 10 gibibytes of storage, both renewing monthly rather than expiring. The only standing free allowance of the four — the others offer a trial or a credit. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing))
- ClickHouse Cloud: Trial credits over a 30-day window, drawn down until they are depleted or the window closes, whichever comes first. Adding a card during the trial does not end it — the credits keep being consumed first. A time-boxed credit rather than a standing allowance, which is the opposite of BigQuery's tebibyte renewing every month. ([source](https://clickhouse.com/docs/products/cloud/reference/billing))

### Entry paid plan

- Google BigQuery: Nothing until the second tebibyte. Queries are $6.25 per tebibyte scanned above the free tier, with no cluster, node or plan fee underneath — the only member here where a small workload genuinely costs zero. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing))
- ClickHouse Cloud: From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity. ([source](https://clickhouse.com/docs/products/cloud/reference/billing))

### Pricing model

- Google BigQuery: Two compute models. On-demand bills the bytes each query processes, at $6.25 per tebibyte. Capacity bills slot-hours — reserved virtual CPUs — regardless of what the queries read. The first model punishes unselective queries and the second punishes idle capacity, and the choice is made per account rather than per query. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing))
- ClickHouse Cloud: Compute, storage and data transfer itemised separately, with compute varying by how many hours a day the service is active — $39.91, $79.83 or $159.66 in the published example for 6, 12 or 24 hours, against a flat $25.30 of storage. Scale, the always-on auto-scaling tier, starts at $499.38 a month. ([source](https://clickhouse.com/docs/products/cloud/reference/billing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Google BigQuery if Queries that are occasional or selective. Nothing is provisioned, the first tebibyte scanned each month is free, and a workload that runs twice a week costs nothing between runs — the only member here where a small warehouse genuinely bills zero.

Pick ClickHouse Cloud if Knowing what a part-time warehouse costs. The published example is explicit — $66.52 a month for a Basic service awake six hours a day against $186.27 awake around the clock — with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.

Consider something else: Google BigQuery — Your queries scan more than they return. Billing is on bytes READ, not rows produced, so $6.25 per tebibyte is a tax on unselective SQL and a dashboard refreshing every minute against a wide table is the expensive shape.

Consider something else: ClickHouse Cloud — Data transfer matters. It is the only one here that puts public internet egress and cross-region transfer on the invoice as their own lines, so moving results out has a price the others absorb.

## Documented by only one

- Kind of free offer: ClickHouse Cloud: Free trial
- Egress over allowance: ClickHouse Cloud: Itemised rather than absorbed: the published example carries $1.15 of public internet egress on 10 GB and $0.16 of cross-region transfer on 5 GB. The only member of this category that puts data transfer on the invoice as its own line.
- Storage price: Google BigQuery: $0.000031507 per gibibyte-hour for active logical storage and $0.000021918 for long-term, with the first 10 GiB free each month. Quoted hourly to nine decimal places; the page does not convert it to a monthly figure and neither does this record.
- Query price: Google BigQuery: $6.25 per tebibyte of data processed, after the first tebibyte each month. Charged on bytes READ, not rows returned, so the cost of a query is a property of the table scan rather than the result.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Google BigQuery or ClickHouse Cloud?**

Google BigQuery: Nothing until the second tebibyte. Queries are $6.25 per tebibyte scanned above the free tier, with no cluster, node or plan fee underneath — the only member here where a small workload genuinely costs zero.
ClickHouse Cloud: From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity.

**Should I choose Google BigQuery or ClickHouse Cloud?**

Pick Google BigQuery if Queries that are occasional or selective. Nothing is provisioned, the first tebibyte scanned each month is free, and a workload that runs twice a week costs nothing between runs — the only member here where a small warehouse genuinely bills zero.
Pick ClickHouse Cloud if Knowing what a part-time warehouse costs. The published example is explicit — $66.52 a month for a Basic service awake six hours a day against $186.27 awake around the clock — with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.