Amazon Timestream
activeby Amazon Web Services · since 2020 · also known as Timestream for InfluxDB, Timestream for LiveAnalytics, AWS Timestream
AWS time-series services: managed InfluxDB today, with serverless LiveAnalytics closed to new customers.
Overview
Amazon Timestream launched in 2020 as a serverless, SQL-queried time-series database with automatic tiering from memory to magnetic storage, now branded Timestream for LiveAnalytics. In 2024 AWS added Timestream for InfluxDB, a managed InfluxDB service that now offers InfluxDB 2 instances and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise clusters. On June 20, 2025 AWS closed LiveAnalytics to new customers and began steering them to the InfluxDB option; existing LiveAnalytics workloads keep running and still get security and availability work. For a new AWS project, think of Timestream as managed InfluxDB and compare it with running InfluxDB, Tiger Cloud or Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Fully managed on AWS with IAM, KMS encryption and VPC integration
- +Timestream for InfluxDB keeps standard InfluxDB APIs, so Telegraf and Grafana work unchanged
- +LiveAnalytics needs no capacity planning for existing users
- +Choice of InfluxDB 2 (Flux) or InfluxDB 3 Enterprise clusters
Trade-offs
- −LiveAnalytics, the original serverless engine, is closed to new customers
- −AWS-only; Timestream for InfluxDB is mostly a hosted open-source engine with AWS pricing
- −Instance-based InfluxDB pricing is less elastic than the original serverless model
- −Migrating off LiveAnalytics requires a data export and query rewrite
Great for
- +IoT telemetry on AWS IoT Core
- +Managed InfluxDB without running servers
- +Operational metrics for AWS-hosted apps
Think twice for
- −Multi-cloud or on-prem deployments
- −New projects expecting the LiveAnalytics serverless model
- −Log search
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 7 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Large · ≤ 1 PB
- Horizontal scaling
- Native
- Multi-region
- No
- Transactions
- None
- Consistency
- Eventual
- Schema
- Flexible
- Architecture
- Serverless, Distributed
- Query languages
- SQL, InfluxQL, Flux
LiveAnalytics scales automatically; InfluxDB 3 Enterprise clusters scale by adding nodes, InfluxDB 2 instances scale up.
Deployment
available on · AWS
Ecosystem
Alternatives to Amazon Timestream
Purpose-built time-series database, rebuilt in Rust on Arrow, DataFusion and Parquet for version 3.
amazon-timestream vs influxdb →PostgreSQL extension adding hypertables, columnar compression and continuous aggregates for time series.
amazon-timestream vs timescaledb →Microsoft's Kusto engine: fast KQL analytics over logs, telemetry and time series at petabyte scale.
amazon-timestream vs azure-data-explorer →Columnar time-series SQL database built for market data and very high ingest rates.
amazon-timestream vs questdb →Resource-frugal, Prometheus-compatible metrics database, run as a single binary or a sharded cluster.
amazon-timestream vs victoriametrics →Grafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics.
amazon-timestream vs grafana-mimir →Amazon Timestream FAQ
What is Amazon Timestream?
Amazon Timestream is a time-series database by Amazon Web Services, first released in 2020. Amazon Timestream launched in 2020 as a serverless, SQL-queried time-series database with automatic tiering from memory to magnetic storage, now branded Timestream for LiveAnalytics. In 2024 AWS added Timestream for InfluxDB, a managed InfluxDB service that now offers InfluxDB 2 instances and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise clusters. On June 20, 2025 AWS closed LiveAnalytics to new customers and began steering them to the InfluxDB option; existing LiveAnalytics workloads keep running and still get security and availability work. For a new AWS project, think of Timestream as managed InfluxDB and compare it with running InfluxDB, Tiger Cloud or Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus.
Is Amazon Timestream open source?
No. Amazon Timestream is proprietary, closed-source software.
Does Amazon Timestream support ACID transactions?
No. Amazon Timestream does not provide ACID transactions; its consistency model is eventual.
Does Amazon Timestream scale horizontally?
Amazon Timestream scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at large scale (≤ 1 PB).
How can I run Amazon Timestream?
You can use the vendor's managed cloud and run it serverless. It is available on AWS.
What is Amazon Timestream best for?
Amazon Timestream is a strong fit for IoT telemetry on AWS IoT Core, managed InfluxDB without running servers and operational metrics for AWS-hosted apps. Think twice for multi-cloud or on-prem deployments.
What are the best alternatives to Amazon Timestream?
Common alternatives to Amazon Timestream include InfluxDB, TimescaleDB, Azure Data Explorer, QuestDB and VictoriaMetrics. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
How popular is Amazon Timestream?
Amazon Timestream ranks #433 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (3.5/100), and #28 among time-series databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.