Amazon Redshift
activeby Amazon Web Services · since 2012 · also known as Redshift, Redshift Serverless
AWS's MPP columnar data warehouse, available as provisioned RA3 clusters or Serverless.
Overview
Amazon Redshift is AWS's managed data warehouse, descended from ParAccel and speaking the PostgreSQL wire protocol. RA3 nodes keep hot data on local SSD and the rest in Redshift Managed Storage on S3, and Redshift Serverless removes node sizing entirely. It integrates deeply with the AWS estate: zero-ETL from Aurora and DynamoDB, Spectrum queries over S3, streaming ingestion from Kinesis and MSK, and data sharing between clusters. It is the natural default for AWS-centric shops, though it still asks for more tuning (sort keys, workload management) than Snowflake or BigQuery.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Deep AWS integration: zero-ETL from Aurora/DynamoDB, Spectrum over S3, IAM
- +Serverless option removes node sizing for spiky workloads
- +PostgreSQL wire compatibility works with most BI tools and drivers
- +Native streaming ingestion from Kinesis and Amazon MSK
- +Data sharing between clusters without copying
Trade-offs
- −Still benefits from manual tuning of sort keys, distribution and WLM
- −PostgreSQL compatibility is shallow: old dialect, no extensions
- −Only available on AWS
- −Concurrency on provisioned clusters needs paid concurrency scaling
Great for
- +Enterprise data warehouse on AWS
- +BI dashboards over curated marts
- +Lakehouse queries over S3 with Spectrum
- +Near-real-time analytics on Aurora data via zero-ETL
Think twice for
- −OLTP workloads
- −Multi-cloud deployments
- −Heavy semi-structured or schema-less data
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 13 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Massive · Multi-PB
- Horizontal scaling
- Native
- Multi-region
- Read replicas
- Transactions
- Full ACID
- Consistency
- Strong
- Schema
- Strict
- Architecture
- Distributed, Shared storage, Serverless
- Query languages
- SQL (PostgreSQL dialect), PL/pgSQL
Scales by adding RA3 nodes or RPUs; concurrency scaling adds transient clusters; cross-region snapshots and data sharing.
Deployment
available on · AWS
Ecosystem
Alternatives to Amazon Redshift
Fully managed cloud data warehouse with separate storage and compute, now spanning AI and apps.
amazon-redshift vs snowflake →Google's serverless, pay-per-query data warehouse built on Dremel and Colossus.
amazon-redshift vs google-bigquery →Serverless SQL warehouses on the Databricks lakehouse, powered by the Photon C++ engine.
amazon-redshift vs databricks-sql →Serverless AWS query service running Trino-based SQL directly over data in S3.
amazon-redshift vs amazon-athena →Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows.
amazon-redshift vs clickhouse →Low-latency analytical database with a Postgres-compliant dialect, as cloud service or self-hosted Core.
amazon-redshift vs firebolt →Amazon Redshift FAQ
What is Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift is a columnar / OLAP database by Amazon Web Services, first released in 2012. Amazon Redshift is AWS's managed data warehouse, descended from ParAccel and speaking the PostgreSQL wire protocol. RA3 nodes keep hot data on local SSD and the rest in Redshift Managed Storage on S3, and Redshift Serverless removes node sizing entirely. It integrates deeply with the AWS estate: zero-ETL from Aurora and DynamoDB, Spectrum queries over S3, streaming ingestion from Kinesis and MSK, and data sharing between clusters. It is the natural default for AWS-centric shops, though it still asks for more tuning (sort keys, workload management) than Snowflake or BigQuery.
Is Amazon Redshift open source?
No. Amazon Redshift is proprietary, closed-source software.
Does Amazon Redshift support ACID transactions?
Yes. Amazon Redshift supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.
Does Amazon Redshift scale horizontally?
Amazon Redshift scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at massive scale (Multi-PB). It supports cross-region read replicas.
How can I run Amazon Redshift?
You can use the vendor's managed cloud and run it serverless. Managed offerings include Amazon Redshift Serverless. It is available on AWS.
What is Amazon Redshift best for?
Amazon Redshift is a strong fit for enterprise data warehouse on AWS, BI dashboards over curated marts and lakehouse queries over S3 with Spectrum. Think twice for OLTP workloads.
What are the best alternatives to Amazon Redshift?
Common alternatives to Amazon Redshift include Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Databricks SQL, Amazon Athena and ClickHouse. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
How popular is Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift ranks #21 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (55.8/100), and #5 among columnar / OLAP databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.