# ClickHouse vs Redshift vs BigQuery, which is the best columnar database solution for a data engineering team that needs sub-second queries on event data at reasonable cost, without managing their own cluster?

<p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">Putting together a buyer's guide on<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/categories/columnar-databases"> </a><a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/categories/columnar-databases">columnar databases</a> for data-heavy teams, and the question of ClickHouse vs Redshift vs BigQuery for a data engineering team that needs sub-second queries on event data at reasonable cost, without managing their own cluster keeps coming up as the hardest one to answer clearly. The "no cluster management" constraint narrows the field fast, but the cost picture shifts significantly depending on query volume and how well-optimised the SQL is.</p><p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">These three come up most from what I've been reading:</p><ul>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/clickhouse/reviews"><strong>ClickHouse</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Blazing fast on append-heavy event data and handles billion-row queries in seconds. The open-source self-hosted path keeps costs low, but the managed cloud option changes that calculation. Does the cloud pricing hold up at high query volume?</li>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-redshift/reviews"><strong>Amazon Redshift</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Strong within AWS with good BI tool support, but distribution and sort key tuning adds operational overhead that data teams report scaling with query complexity.</li>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/google-cloud-bigquery/reviews"><strong>Google Cloud BigQuery</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Serverless with zero cluster management and native Looker integration. Per-TB pricing is clean until a poorly optimised query scans far more data than expected.</li>
</ul><p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">For teams that actually benchmarked these on event data at scale, what did the monthly cost look like once you were past the honeymoon period?</p>

##### Post Metadata
- Posted at: 5 days ago
- Author title: Marketing Executive
- Net upvotes: 1


## Comments
### Comment 1

&lt;p&gt;ClickHouse is great for raw speed, but once you remove self-managed clusters, the cost story gets less obvious. BigQuery is cleaner to operate, but I’ve seen bills jump quickly with event-heavy workloads. When you were digging into this, did anything actually feel predictable cost-wise at scale, or was everything a bit “depends on usage”?&lt;/p&gt;

##### Comment Metadata
- Posted at: 5 days ago
- Author title: Writer





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