# Ipinfo API vs Google BigQuery **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Tags:** api, bigquery\ **Created:** [August 20, 2025, 10:55am UTC](https://community.ipinfo.io/t/ipinfo-api-vs-google-bigquery/7009 "2025-08-20T10:55:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 2
**Author:** ![Abdullah](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/community.ipinfo.io/abdullah/32/4973_2.png) [@Abdullah](https://community.ipinfo.io/u/Abdullah)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2025, 3:07pm UTC](https://community.ipinfo.io/t/ipinfo-api-vs-google-bigquery/7009/2 "2025-08-20T15:07:17Z")
Hi, Thank you for using IPinfo Lite on GCP. Do not worry about upgrading to our [IP to location data right](https://ipinfo.io/products/ip-geolocation-database) now. The exact same data you are using is currently being used global software applications, major OSS projects, and F500 companies. #### You have asked a great question! Comparing our [API service](https://ipinfo.io/developers/lite-api) with GCP BigQuery integration for website applications. The **short answer** is to use MMDB database. > **[Data downloads vs API, or both? - IPinfo blog](https://ipinfo.io/blog/data-downloads-vs-api)** > > Does data retrieval matter? In some cases, it doesn’t. In other cases, it really does. API and data downloads offer different benefits.Read more. In reality, when it comes to critical IP lookup time, you have to use the MMDB database. The MMDB database solution is going to be instantaneous. It is faster than the API, and of course faster than GCP. > **[How to choose the best file format for your IPinfo database?](https://ipinfo.io/blog/ipinfo-database-formats)** > > We're the trusted source for IP address information, handling 50 billion IP geolocation API requests per month for over 1,000 businesses and 100,000+ developers #### So, why is MMDB faster than API and GCP? MMDB is a binary database format designed for IP address databases. In the backend of our API service, we actually use the MMDB database as well. In a traditional plain text IP address database, each row of data consists of IP address ranges represented like so: | Field Name | Example | Data Type | Description | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | start\_ip | 1.0.16.0 | TEXT | Starting IP address of an IP address range | | end\_ip | 1.0.31.255 | TEXT | Ending IP address of an IP address range | | country | JP | TEXT | ISO 3166 country code of the location | Meaning that when you have to look up an IP address, the algorithm will go through one row at a time and seeing if the IP address range is greater than the starting IP address or less or equal to the end IP address. If it matches, it will return the corresponding IP address metadata. But in the binary implementation of MMDB, more dedicated, sophisticated algorithms are used, which makes this process faster. However, the issue with non-MMDB IP addresses is that data platforms (such as Snowflake, GCP, PostgreSQL, etc.) often are not equipped to handle IP address lookup mechanisms similar to MMDB. So, when you look under the hood of our UDF, the implementation (though sophisticated and taking full advantage of what the platform could provide) is never going to be super fast compared to MMDB or API service. So, the question becomes, considering there is a faster MMDB-based solution out there, why should you use the GCP, Snowflake, or any of our other database platform solutions? The answer is bulk lookup, ease of use, and data migration. All your data in GCP can be moved to BigQuery. So, if you want to use MMDB-based solutions, you have to use a compute instance or something where you need to enrich the IP address first, then move the data to BigQuery. Even though BigQuery’s lookup mechanism is comparatively slow, BigQuery is essentially where all of GCP’s data lives. So, once you bring your log data in, you can do threat intelligence and IP enrichment at bulk quite easily. Most of our users that use our GCP or Snowflake integration are not doing real-time enrichment or small batches of IP enrichment. They are processing millions of IPs in a batch. At those scales, GCP is incredibly faster than our API and is also not subjected to API rate limits. So, if you want to do real-time enrichment for a website, use an [List of MMDB reader libraries](https://community.ipinfo.io/t/list-of-mmdb-reader-libraries/2821) and integrate our IPinfo Lite MMDB database into your service. This, however, would involve you maintaining regular updates for the IPinfo Lite database, but that is not a significant challenge. * * * Please let me know what do you think. Cheers! — Abdullah | DevRel, IPinfo Connect with me: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/reincoder/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/reincoder/) --- _[View the full topic](https://community.ipinfo.io/t/ipinfo-api-vs-google-bigquery/7009)._