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Best Free Alternatives to Google BigQuery
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Category: Data Warehouse / LakehouseVerified for 2025
Top Recommended Replacements
Apache Doris
FREEBest Professional Alternative
Why we like it
The 'Enterprise-Grade' swap; excels at complex multi-table joins where other OLAP tools fail; supports standard SQL/MySQL protocols; offers high concurrency for thousands of users at 1/10th the cost of BigQuery slots.
Keep in mind
Requires cluster management (unlike BigQuery's serverless model).
StarRocks
FREEBest for Real-Time Speed
Why we like it
Built for sub-second latency; its vectorized engine is significantly faster than BigQuery for interactive dashboards; bridges the gap to the 'Lakehouse' by querying Iceberg/Hudi files in place.
Keep in mind
Smaller SaaS ecosystem compared to Google Cloud.
DuckDB
FREEBest for Local Dev / Small Data
Why we like it
Passes the 'Laptop Test'; run the same SQL engine on your MacBook that handles petabytes in production; zero cost for unit testing; perfect for unbundling small ETL tasks from the expensive warehouse.
Keep in mind
Single-node only; not meant for multi-user distributed warehousing.
ClickHouse
FREEBest for Logs/Metrics
Why we like it
The world's fastest analytical database; handles millions of inserts per second; storage is ultra-compressed (often 10x better than BigQuery), saving massive amounts on long-term data retention.
Keep in mind
Historically difficult to manage (though ClickHouse Keeper has simplified this in 2025).
Apache Iceberg + Trino
FREEBest for No Lock-In
Why we like it
The 'Open Lakehouse' stack; store data in Iceberg (on S3/GCS) and query it with Trino; you own the data format, meaning you can switch engines tomorrow without an expensive migration.
Keep in mind
Higher architectural complexity; requires managing a query engine and a catalog.
Tinybird
FREEBest for Real-Time APIs
Why we like it
Turns your data into high-performance APIs in seconds; built on ClickHouse; much faster for user-facing applications than querying BigQuery directly via an SDK.
Keep in mind
Proprietary layer on top of open-source ClickHouse.
Apache Druid
FREEBest for Streaming Analytics
Why we like it
Purpose-built for Kafka/Event data; provides 'slice-and-dice' sub-second analytics on streaming data with massive concurrency.
Keep in mind
Very complex to deploy and maintain.
MotherDuck
FREEBest 'Serverless' Alternative
Why we like it
The 'Serverless DuckDB'; gives you a BigQuery-like experience but built on DuckDB; handles hybrid local/cloud queries; much cheaper and simpler for most 'medium-sized' data tasks.
Keep in mind
Proprietary cloud wrapper around open-source DuckDB.
Hydra
FREEBest Columnar Postgres
Why we like it
Adds columnar storage to Postgres; if you already use Postgres for your app, you can now use it for your warehouse too; zero new tools to learn.
Keep in mind
Not as performant as specialized OLAP engines for petabyte-scale.
PostHog
FREEBest for Product Analytics
Why we like it
If you use BigQuery for 'Event Tracking,' stop. PostHog is an open-source suite for product analytics, heatmaps, and session replays that runs on ClickHouse.
Keep in mind
Specific to product/user data, not a general-purpose warehouse.
Apache Superset
FREEBest Visualization Swap
Why we like it
Replaces the BigQuery + Looker stack; modern, beautiful dashboards that connect to any of the free databases above; zero per-seat licensing fees.
Keep in mind
Requires a metadata database (Postgres) to store dashboard state.
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