Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg vs Starburst Galaxy
Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg
cloud.google.com
Starburst Galaxy
starburst.ioSide by side
| Figure | Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg | Starburst Galaxy |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.04/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 11 | 4 |
| Spec score · Ai Data Platforms | 9.1 (#1) | 7.4 (#6) |
| Spec score · Data Lakehouse Platforms | 9.0 (#2) | 7.4 (#13) |
| API | The Lakehouse API is a serverless, highly available metastore API exposing REST resources for catalogs and data-sharing objects. | The Galaxy API is a REST API over TLS/HTTPS, and its authentication tokens expire after 10 minutes. |
| Founded | 1998 | 2017 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States | Boston, Massachusetts, USA |
Plans
Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg
- Metadata storage free tierPriced on request
- Metadata storagePriced on request
- Table managementPriced on request
- Class A metadata accessPriced on request
- Class B metadata accessPriced on request
- Catalog federation metadata refreshPriced on request
- Metadata storage included tierFree
- Metadata storage overage$0.04 a month
- Lakehouse table management$0.12 a month
- Class B metadata access$0.90 a month
Starburst Galaxy
- FreeFree
- ProPriced on request
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Mission-CriticalPriced on request
In their own words
Google Cloud Lakehouse for Apache Iceberg
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.
Starburst Galaxy
Starburst Galaxy is a managed cloud analytics platform built on Trino. It lets teams query data across sources in one SQL query without copying it, with availability on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Starburst lists more than 50 data sources, including Amazon S3, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery and Azure Blob. Galaxy can stream from Kafka or load CSV, JSON and AVRO files into Iceberg. Its LakeOps service automates Iceberg table compaction, snapshot expiry and orphan-file removal; AIDA converts natural-language questions into governed insights through a customizable interface or MCP. Security provisions include fine-grained RBAC and ABAC, encryption, data classification and private connectivity. Starburst describes Galaxy as SOC 2 Type II certified and HIPAA-ready. A free plan allows up to three clusters for ad hoc queries in standard execution mode. Usage charges vary by plan and cover items such as compute, ingestion and private-link data transfer. A 30-day trial includes Enterprise features and $500 in compute resources. Starburst recommends Galaxy for organizations without resources to manage complex data clusters.