Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg vs LavaLake

Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg is a web service for working with Apache Iceberg tables. Its listed capabilities include SQL analytics, ACID transactions, streaming ingestion, and a governance catalog, with both listed storage models and table-format categories supported. Charges are organized by metadata storage, table management, metadata access, and catalog federation refresh rather than a single stated plan price. Metadata storage includes 1 GiB free each month; additional storage starts at $0.04 per GiB per month. Table management starts at $0.12 per DCU-hour and includes storage optimization, adaptive file sizing, automatic clustering, garbage collection, and BigQuery metadata generation. Class A metadata access includes 5,000 free operations monthly, and Class B includes 50,000. Catalog federation metadata refresh lists 0 to 5,001 free operations per account each month. The service is paid overall and has no free plan, despite those component-level free allowances. Listed billing thresholds are above 5,001 operations for Class A and catalog refresh, and above 50,001 for Class B. Google was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

LavaLake combines a data warehouse and lakehouse with SQL, dashboards and AI agents for deployment in a customer’s own data center. Its assistant can find data, query metrics and create dashboards using the signed-in user’s permissions. An MCP server lets external agents use platform tools under those permissions. Read-only database sources include PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL Server, SAP Business One and SAP S/4HANA. CSV and DATEV files can be imported, while PDF, Word and text documents can be searched. Hybrid search combines vector and keyword results using a locally run nomic-embed-text model with PostgreSQL and pgvector. The lakehouse uses Apache Iceberg on S3-compatible storage, Nessie as its versioned catalog and Trino as its query engine. Tableau and Power BI connect through a read-only HTTP feed that applies analyst identity and records data fetches in an audit chain. The maker says lakehouse data and local search stay on the customer’s network, while external AI providers receive conversation content and assistant tool results. Core is free with no time limit; paid plans start at €249/mo.