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Amazon Athena vs Amazon Redshift

Amazon Athena: Serverless AWS query service running Trino-based SQL directly over data in S3. Amazon Redshift: AWS's MPP columnar data warehouse, available as provisioned RA3 clusters or Serverless.

key differences

  • Amazon Athena is primarily a relational database; Amazon Redshift is columnar / OLAP.
  • Transactions: Amazon Athena offers limited ACID; Amazon Redshift offers full.
  • Only Amazon Athena has time travel.
  • Only Amazon Redshift has transactions, stored procedures, materialized views, columnar storage, durable persistence.

choose amazon-athena for

  • +Ad-hoc SQL over S3 logs (CloudTrail, ALB, VPC flow)
  • +Serverless lakehouse queries on Iceberg
  • +Lightweight BI on curated S3 data

best at · Lakehouse, OLAP, Warehouse

choose amazon-redshift 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

best at · Warehouse, OLAP, Lakehouse

Amazon AthenaServerless AWS query service running Trino-based SQL directly over data in S3.
Amazon RedshiftAWS's MPP columnar data warehouse, available as provisioned RA3 clusters or Serverless.
overview
Primary model
Relational
Columnar / OLAP
Also supports
Columnar / OLAP
Relational, Document, Spatial
Type
Managed service
Managed service
Status
Active
Active
Developer
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services
First release
2016
2012
Latest version
–
–
License
ProprietaryProprietary
ProprietaryProprietary
Free tier
—
—
popularity
WhichDB Score
19.5
55.8
Rank
#166
#21
GitHub stars
–
–
Stack Overflow questions
3.6K
8.8K
scale & guarantees
Comfortable data size
Massive (Multi-PB)
Massive (Multi-PB)
Horizontal scaling
Native
Native
Multi-region
None
Read replicas
ACID
Limited
Full
Consistency
Strong
Strong
Schema
Strict
Strict
Architecture
Serverless, Distributed
Distributed, Shared storage, Serverless
deployment
Self-hosted
—
—
Vendor-managed cloud
✓
✓
Serverless
✓
✓
Embedded
—
—
Edge
—
—
Clouds
AWS
AWS
capabilities
Transactions
—
✓
Joins
✓
✓
Secondary indexes
—
—
Full-text search
—
—
Vector search
—
—
Geospatial
✓
✓
JSON
✓
✓
Change data capture
—
—
Triggers
—
—
Stored procedures
—
✓
Materialized views
—
✓
TTL / expiry
—
—
Pub/Sub
—
—
Columnar storage
—
✓
In-memory
—
—
Durable persistence
—
✓
Compression
—
✓
Encryption at rest
—
✓
Role-based access
✓
✓
Time travel
✓
—
Branching
—
—
Online schema changes
—
✓
Streaming ingest
—
✓
Offline sync
—
—
Runs in WebAssembly
—
—
interfaces
Query languages
SQL (Trino dialect), PySpark
SQL (PostgreSQL dialect), PL/pgSQL
Client languages
Python, Java, JavaScript, Go, .NET
Python, Java, JavaScript, Go, .NET, C
Best for
Lakehouse, OLAP, Warehouse
Warehouse, OLAP, Lakehouse
Add more to this comparisonNot sure either fits? Try smart match

Amazon Athena vs Amazon Redshift: FAQ

What is the difference between Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift?

Amazon Athena: Serverless AWS query service running Trino-based SQL directly over data in S3. Amazon Redshift: AWS's MPP columnar data warehouse, available as provisioned RA3 clusters or Serverless. Amazon Athena is primarily a relational database; Amazon Redshift is columnar / OLAP. Transactions: Amazon Athena offers limited ACID; Amazon Redshift offers full. Only Amazon Athena has time travel.

When should I choose Amazon Athena over Amazon Redshift?

Choose Amazon Athena for ad-hoc SQL over S3 logs (CloudTrail, ALB, VPC flow); serverless lakehouse queries on Iceberg; and lightweight BI on curated S3 data. Choose Amazon Redshift for enterprise data warehouse on AWS, BI dashboards over curated marts and lakehouse queries over S3 with Spectrum.

Is Amazon Athena or Amazon Redshift more popular?

Amazon Redshift ranks #21 on the WhichDB Score (55.8/100) and Amazon Athena ranks #166 (19.5/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.

Are Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift open source?

No. Amazon Athena is proprietary, closed-source software. No. Amazon Redshift is proprietary, closed-source software.