Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google Cloud Dataflow VS Apache Beam

Compare Google Cloud Dataflow VS Apache Beam and see what are their differences

Google Cloud Dataflow logo Google Cloud Dataflow

Google Cloud Dataflow is a fully-managed cloud service and programming model for batch and streaming big data processing.

Apache Beam logo Apache Beam

Apache Beam provides an advanced unified programming model to implement batch and streaming data processing jobs.
  • Google Cloud Dataflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03
  • Apache Beam Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-31

Google Cloud Dataflow features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Dataflow can automatically scale up or down depending on your data processing needs, handling massive datasets with ease.
  • Fully Managed
    Dataflow is a fully managed service, which means you don't have to worry about managing the underlying infrastructure.
  • Unified Programming Model
    It provides a single programming model for both batch and streaming data processing using Apache Beam, simplifying the development process.
  • Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Bigtable.
  • Real-time Analytics
    Supports real-time data processing, enabling quicker insights and facilitating faster decision-making.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures you only pay for resources you actually use, which can be cost-effective.
  • Global Availability
    Cloud Dataflow is available globally, which allows for regionalized data processing.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Built-in fault tolerance mechanisms help ensure uninterrupted data processing.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Dataflow

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The complexity of using Apache Beam and understanding its model can be challenging for beginners.
  • Debugging Difficulties
    Debugging data processing pipelines can be complex and time-consuming, especially for large-scale data flows.
  • Cost Management
    While it can be cost-efficient, the costs can rise quickly if not monitored properly, particularly with real-time data processing.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Using Google Cloud Dataflow can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another cloud provider.
  • Limited Support for Non-Google Services
    While it integrates well within Google Cloud, support for non-Google services may not be as robust.
  • Latency
    There can be some latency in data processing, especially when dealing with high volumes of data.
  • Complexity in Pipeline Design
    Designing pipelines to be efficient and cost-effective can be complex, requiring significant expertise.

Apache Beam features and specs

  • Unified Model
    Apache Beam provides a unified programming model that simplifies the development of both batch and stream processing applications. This reduces the complexity in maintaining separate codebases for different types of data processing needs.
  • Portability
    The portability of Apache Beam allows developers to write their code once and run it on different execution engines like Apache Flink, Apache Spark, and Google Cloud Dataflow, offering flexibility in choosing the right runtime environment.
  • Rich SDKs
    Apache Beam offers rich SDKs for multiple languages including Java, Python, and Go, allowing a broader range of developers to leverage its capabilities without being restricted to a single programming language.
  • Windowing and Triggering
    It provides powerful abstractions for windowing and triggering, enabling developers to handle out-of-order data and late data arrivals efficiently, which is crucial for accurate stream processing.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Beam

  • Complexity
    Although Apache Beam simplifies certain aspects of data processing, its unified model and advanced features can introduce complexity, making it potentially challenging for developers unfamiliar with distributed data processing concepts.
  • Limited Language Support
    While Apache Beam supports Java, Python, and Go, the level of feature support and maturity can vary between these SDKs, which might limit adoption for developers using other programming languages.
  • Performance Overhead
    The abstraction layer provided by Beam to ensure portability might result in a performance overhead compared to using execution engines directly, potentially affecting performance-sensitive applications.
  • Evolving Ecosystem
    As an evolving framework, Apache Beam’s APIs and ecosystem components might change over time, requiring continuous learning and adaptation from developers to keep up with the latest updates and best practices.

Google Cloud Dataflow videos

Introduction to Google Cloud Dataflow - Course Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - Serverless data processing with Google Cloud Dataflow (Google Cloud Next '17)
  • Review - Apache Beam and Google Cloud Dataflow

Apache Beam videos

How to Write Batch or Streaming Data Pipelines with Apache Beam in 15 mins with James Malone

More videos:

  • Review - Best practices towards a production-ready pipeline with Apache Beam
  • Review - Streaming data into Apache Beam with Kafka

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Cloud Dataflow and Apache Beam)
Big Data
79 79%
21% 21
Data Dashboard
82 82%
18% 18
Data Warehousing
80 80%
20% 20
Data Management
100 100%
0% 0

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 Dataflow and Apache Beam

Google Cloud Dataflow Reviews

Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
Google Cloud Dataflow is highly focused on real-time streaming data and batch data processing from web resources, IoT devices, etc. Data gets cleansed and filtered as Dataflow implements Apache Beam to simplify large-scale data processing. Such prepared data is ready for analysis for Google BigQuery or other analytics tools for prediction, personalization, and other purposes.
Source: blog.skyvia.com

Apache Beam Reviews

We have no reviews of Apache Beam yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Apache Beam might be a bit more popular than Google Cloud Dataflow. We know about 14 links to it since March 2021 and only 14 links to Google Cloud Dataflow. 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 Dataflow mentions (14)

  • How do you implement CDC in your organization
    Imo if you are using the cloud and not doing anything particularly fancy the native tooling is good enough. For AWS that is DMS (for RDBMS) and Kinesis/Lamba (for streams). Google has Data Fusion and Dataflow . Azure hasData Factory if you are unfortunate enough to have to use SQL Server or Azure. Imo the vendored tools and open source tools are more useful when you need to ingest data from SaaS platforms, and... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Here’s a playlist of 7 hours of music I use to focus when I’m coding/developing. Post yours as well if you also have one!
    This sub is for Apache Beam and Google Cloud Dataflow as the sidebar suggests. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How are view/listen counts rolled up on something like Spotify/YouTube?
    I am pretty sure they are using pub/sub with probably a Dataflow pipeline to process all that data. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Best way to export several GCP datasets to AWS?
    You can run a Dataflow job that copies the data directly from BQ into S3, though you'll have to run a job per table. This can be somewhat expensive to do. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Why we don’t use Spark
    It was clear we needed something that was built specifically for our big-data SaaS requirements. Dataflow was our first idea, as the service is fully managed, highly scalable, fairly reliable and has a unified model for streaming & batch workloads. Sadly, the cost of this service was quite large. Secondly, at that moment in time, the service only accepted Java implementations, of which we had little knowledge... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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Apache Beam mentions (14)

  • Ask HN: Does (or why does) anyone use MapReduce anymore?
    The "streaming systems" book answers your question and more: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/streaming-systems/9781491983867/. It gives you a history of how batch processing started with MapReduce, and how attempts at scaling by moving towards streaming systems gave us all the subsequent frameworks (Spark, Beam, etc.). As for the framework called MapReduce, it isn't used much, but its descendant... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How do Streaming Aggregation Pipelines work?
    Apache Beam is one of many tools that you can use. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Real Time Data Infra Stack
    Apache Beam: Streaming framework which can be run on several runner such as Apache Flink and GCP Dataflow. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Google Cloud Reference
    Apache Beam: Batch/streaming data processing 🔗Link. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Composer out of resources - "INFO Task exited with return code Negsignal.SIGKILL"
    What you are looking for is Dataflow. It can be a bit tricky to wrap your head around at first, but I highly suggest leaning into this technology for most of your data engineering needs. It's based on the open source Apache Beam framework that originated at Google. We use an internal version of this system at Google for virtually all of our pipeline tasks, from a few GB, to Exabyte scale systems -- it can do it all. Source: over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Cloud Dataflow and Apache Beam, you can also consider the following products

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Amazon EMR - Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a web service that makes it easy to quickly process vast amounts of data.

Qubole - Qubole delivers a self-service platform for big aata analytics built on Amazon, Microsoft and Google Clouds.

Databricks - Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

Snowflake - Snowflake is the only data platform built for the cloud for all your data & all your users. Learn more about our purpose-built SQL cloud data warehouse.

Apache Spark - Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.