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Amazon RDS vs Amazon Redshift
Short answer: Pick Amazon RDS if you want managed relational databases with high availability; pick Amazon Redshift if you want SQL analytics on petabyte-scale data. Amazon RDS has a free plan; Amazon Redshift is paid, with a free trial.
Which to pick
Pick Amazon RDS if you want…
- Managed relational databases with high availability
- A free plan to start with
- Integrations with AWS Outposts or Amazon RDS Proxy (on Amazon RDS's list, not Amazon Redshift's)
Pick Amazon Redshift if you want…
- SQL analytics on petabyte-scale data
- Cloud data warehousing
- Integrations with Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Aurora or Amazon Kinesis (on Amazon Redshift's list, not Amazon RDS's)
Side by side
- What it is
- Amazon RDS:Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service that simplifies setup, operation, and scaling of multiple database engines on AWS.
- Amazon Redshift:Amazon Redshift is a fully managed cloud data warehouse for fast, scalable SQL analytics on structured and lakehouse data.
- Best for
- Amazon RDS:Managed relational databases with high availability
- Amazon Redshift:SQL analytics on petabyte-scale data
- Who it’s for
- Amazon RDS:Developers and enterprises needing managed relational databases on AWS
- Amazon Redshift:Data engineers, analysts, and developers building analytics or AI workloads on AWS.
- Pricing
- Amazon RDS:Freemium
- Amazon Redshift:Paid
- Free plan or trial
- Amazon RDS:Free trial
- Amazon Redshift:Free trial
- Plans
- Amazon RDS:—
- Amazon Redshift:Provisioned (On-Demand) $0.543 per hour per hour · Serverless $1.50 per hour per hour (per-second increment
- Works with
- Amazon RDS:AWS Outposts, Amazon RDS Proxy
- Amazon Redshift:Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon MSK, Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, Microsoft PowerBI, Apache Iceberg
Amazon RDS features
- Automated management. Handles provisioning, configuration, backups, and patching automatically.
- Multi-AZ high availability. Provides automated failover with Multi-AZ deployments for resilience.
- Engine choice. Supports eight database engines including Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Db2.
- Flexible deployment. Offers on-premises (Outposts), custom OS/database environments, and proxy services.
- Scalable storage. Provides General Purpose SSD and Provisioned IOPS storage options up to 64 TiB.
- Pricing flexibility. Pay-as-you-go on-demand, Reserved Instances, and Free Tier with no minimum fees.
Amazon Redshift features
- Serverless compute. Redshift Serverless auto-scales compute and charges per-second, eliminating cluster management.
- RG and RA3 nodes. Graviton-powered RG instances deliver up to 2.4× faster queries at 30% lower per-vCPU cost.
- Open format support. Native read/write of Apache Iceberg v3 and Parquet tables directly from S3.
- Integrated ML & AI. Run Redshift ML and use Amazon Bedrock or SageMaker for in-SQL machine-learning and generative AI.
- Concurrency scaling & reservations. Automatic extra compute for burst workloads with optional reservations for up to 45% cost savings.
Amazon RDS vs Amazon Redshift FAQ
What is the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?+
Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse, focused on analytics rather than transactional workloads.
Should I use Amazon RDS or Amazon Redshift?+
Pick Amazon RDS if you want managed relational databases with high availability, a free plan to start with or integrations with AWS Outposts or Amazon RDS Proxy (on Amazon RDS's list, not Amazon Redshift's). Pick Amazon Redshift if you want SQL analytics on petabyte-scale data, cloud data warehousing or integrations with Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Aurora or Amazon Kinesis (on Amazon Redshift's list, not Amazon RDS's).
Is Amazon RDS or Amazon Redshift free?+
Amazon RDS has a free plan and paid plans. Amazon Redshift is paid, with a free trial.
Do Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift integrate with the same tools?+
Their integration lists don't overlap: Amazon RDS lists AWS Outposts and Amazon RDS Proxy; Amazon Redshift lists Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon MSK and 5 more.
On DevHunt
Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.