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Google Cloud Bigtable VS DynamoDB

Compare Google Cloud Bigtable VS DynamoDB and see what are their differences

Google Cloud Bigtable logo Google Cloud Bigtable

A high performance NoSQL database service for large analytical and operational workloads.

DynamoDB logo DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It is a fully managed cloud database and supports both document and key-value store models.
  • Google Cloud Bigtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12
  • DynamoDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-18

Google Cloud Bigtable features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Bigtable is designed to scale horizontally to handle massive amounts of data across millions of rows and thousands of columns. This makes it ideal for applications needing to handle large datasets with high throughput.
  • Low Latency
    Bigtable is optimized for low-latency access to big data. It is capable of delivering real-time responses, which is beneficial for applications that require fast read and write operations.
  • Seamless Integration
    Bigtable integrates easily with other GCP services like Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Dataflow, simplifying the development of complex applications that require various cloud services.
  • Managed Service
    As a managed service, Bigtable handles routine operations such as scaling, replication, and failure recovery, allowing users to focus on application development rather than infrastructure management.
  • Strong Consistency
    Bigtable provides strong consistency for read and write operations, ensuring that data is reliable and consistent across operations and query results.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Bigtable

  • Complexity of Use
    Bigtable can be complex to set up and use effectively, especially for those who are unfamiliar with NoSQL databases or distributed systems.
  • Cost
    While scalable, the pricing can become expensive as your requirements grow, especially if you need high throughput and large storage capacities.
  • Limited Querying Capabilities
    Unlike relational databases, Bigtable has limited querying capabilities. It does not support SQL-like queries, making it less suitable for applications that require complex querying options.
  • Region-Specific Availability
    Bigtable is available only in certain regions, which might limit its use for global applications requiring multi-region deployments for latency optimization.
  • Learning Curve
    There's a significant learning curve for new users to understand Bigtable's architecture and its best practices, which can delay the development process.

DynamoDB features and specs

  • Scalability
    DynamoDB automatically scales up and down to handle your application's needs, with no intervention required. This allows for easy handling of traffic spikes and growth over time.
  • Performance
    With its fast, predictable performance at any scale, DynamoDB ensures low-latency responses, even with large volumes of data.
  • Fully Managed
    As a fully managed service, DynamoDB handles hardware provisioning, setup, configuration, replication, software patching, and backups, letting you focus on your application.
  • Flexible Data Model
    DynamoDB supports both document and key-value store models, providing flexibility in how you structure your data.
  • Security
    DynamoDB integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to provide fine-grained access control and encrypts data at rest and in transit.
  • Global Tables
    You can create multi-region, fully replicated tables for high availability and globally distributed apps with low latency reads and writes.
  • Event-Driven Architecture
    DynamoDB integrates with AWS Lambda for automatic triggering and the creation of event-driven architectures.

Possible disadvantages of DynamoDB

  • Pricing Complexity
    DynamoDB's pricing model, which charges based on read and write capacity units, storage, and data transfer, can be complex and difficult to predict.
  • Limited Query Capabilities
    DynamoDB does not support complex queries as well as traditional SQL databases. Querying capabilities are limited primarily to primary key attributes.
  • Secondary Indexes
    While DynamoDB supports secondary indexes, their use can be limited and complex to manage effectively compared to relational databases.
  • Consistency
    DynamoDB offers eventual consistency by default. While strongly consistent reads are available, they can be more expensive and slower.
  • Data Size Limitations
    Each item in a DynamoDB table must be 400KB or less, limiting the amount of data you can store in a single item.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using DynamoDB heavily ties your application to AWS, which can be a downside if you want to maintain flexibility in your cloud infrastructure choices.

Google Cloud Bigtable videos

Scalability Meetup @ Whitepages - Google Cloud BigTable

DynamoDB videos

#13 - Amazon DynamoDB Basics In Under 5 Minutes [Tutorial For Beginners]

More videos:

  • Review - AWS re:Invent 2018: Amazon DynamoDB Deep Dive: Advanced Design Patterns for DynamoDB (DAT401)
  • Review - What is Amazon DynamoDB?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Cloud Bigtable and DynamoDB)
Databases
11 11%
89% 89
NoSQL Databases
18 18%
82% 82
Relational Databases
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google Cloud Bigtable and DynamoDB

Google Cloud Bigtable Reviews

7 Best NoSQL APIs
When businesses need to scale, they want to do so with limited downtime. The Google Cloud Bigtable provides horizontal Scaling in a matter of seconds without any downtime. To scale, cluster nodes are quickly added to increase your overall Bigtable cluster. Google even provides the option of scaling out only for a matter of hours, to handle a large load of requests. Once the...

DynamoDB Reviews

Top 5 Dynobase alternatives you should know about - March 2025 Review
Dynomate offers a comprehensive solution with native AWS SSO support, advanced multi-tab functionality, and Git-based collaboration features. NoSQL Workbench is a valuable free tool from AWS, excellent for designing and visualizing data models. The JetBrains DynamoDB Plugin brings DynamoDB into your IDE with helpful autocomplete and query-saving features.
Source: www.dynomate.io
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
Amazon DynamoDB is a nonrelational database. This database system provides consistent latency and offers built-in security, and in-memory caching. DynamoDB is a serverless database which scales automatically and backs up your data for protection
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, DynamoDB seems to be a lot more popular than Google Cloud Bigtable. While we know about 120 links to DynamoDB, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Google Cloud Bigtable. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google Cloud Bigtable mentions (6)

  • Vaultree and AlloyDB: the world's first Fully Homomorphic and Searchable Cloud Encryption Solution
    In my opinion, Google has built some fantastic database services like Bigtable and Spanner, which literally changed the industry for good, and I am eager to see how they will build upon this new service. With AlloyDB's disaggregated architecture, the dystopian world where I only pay for SQL databases per query and the stored data on GCP seems closer than ever. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Google Cloud Reference
    Cloud Bigtable: Petabyte-scale, low-latency, non-relational 🔗Link 🔗Link. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • A Graph-Based Firebase
    > These triples say that the Layer with id 1 has a fontSize 20 and backgroundColor blue. Since they are different rows, there’s no conflict. This sounds a lot like Bigtable (https://cloud.google.com/bigtable), which also does last-write-wins conflict resolution layer. So this is adding a GraphQL + frontend layer to it? - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • The 4 Types of NoSQL Databases You Need to Know
    Google's BigTable paper inspired this database design, and it is capable of handling large data loads on distributed machines. In addition, column-oriented databases provide efficient compression and high performance with aggregated queries such as sum, average, and minimum. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Can someone help me understand why data batch processing and data streaming processing pose such different challenges in data management?
    Because of these and other differences, the tools used are also different. With batch processing, data might be read from large files, processed, and stored in an OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) database (like MySQL) or OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) system (like Google BigQuery). But these would not be good solutions for streaming applications, because they are not optimized for high throughput on a lot... Source: over 3 years ago
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DynamoDB mentions (120)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Cloud Bigtable and DynamoDB, you can also consider the following products

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Amazon Aurora - MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. Performance and availability of commercial-grade databases at 1/10th the cost.

Azure Cosmos DB - NoSQL JSON database for rapid, iterative app development.

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

Google Cloud Spanner - Google Cloud Spanner is a horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service.