What users are saying about
9 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.7 out of 100
Based on 9 reviews and ratings
Top Rated
107 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9 out of 100
Based on 107 reviews and ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena is well suited for those who want to be able to use SQL queries to look at and analyze their data. Once you get up and running with the system and have all of your preferences ironed out, this is a very simple to understand and easy to use program that can help make information-based decisions. How could you not love that!?

Verified User
Director in Marketing
Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employeesAmazon RDS
If you're operating within the Amazon universe of cloud computing, it's almost a no-brainer to utilize [Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)]. RDS is well suited for probably a majority of applications that are candidates to host on a cloud computing platform as it reduces overall management and complexity of your system.However, if you're doing a lot of data exporting/importing using tools that write to/read from the disk on the server, you may have challenges integrating RDS, as you have no access to the underlying host.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employeesFeature Rating Comparison
Database-as-a-Service
Amazon Athena
8.3
Amazon RDS
9.4
Automatic software patching
Amazon Athena
8.0
Amazon RDS
9.7
Database scalability
Amazon Athena
8.0
Amazon RDS
9.7
Automated backups
Amazon Athena
8.0
Amazon RDS
9.2
Database security provisions
Amazon Athena
9.0
Amazon RDS
9.5
Monitoring and metrics
Amazon Athena
9.0
Amazon RDS
8.3
Automatic host deployment
Amazon Athena
8.0
Amazon RDS
9.7
Pros
Amazon Athena
- Pay only for the data you store. Huge money-saver right there.
- Being able to query using a browser-based system.
- Compatibility with other programs is a nice feature that is very useful.

Verified User
Director in Marketing
Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employeesAmazon RDS
- For engineers with experience managing databases, setup is simple. And for the uninitiated, the RDS console interface becomes intuitive with some practice.
- Not having the maintain the underlying infrastructure is a great benefit of using RDS. Patching and backups can be scheduled from the console and from then on are pretty much automated.
- Right-sizing the DB instance to perform optimally with an application can be a very simple procedure. If a DB instance is not struggling to keep up, the instance size can be scaled up with just a few clicks.
- Baseline configurations are generally sane for most RDS instances. This allows novice developers and engineers to get the most out of the service without being a complete database administrator.
Senior Systems Reliability Engineer
The Walt Disney CompanyEntertainment, 10,001+ employees
Cons
Amazon Athena
- I wish that the program provided individualized access for different users instead of everyone seeing everything.
- Initial setup can be a bit tedious for those unfamiliar with this type of querying.
- Support can be a little lacking when it comes to additional features.

Verified User
Director in Marketing
Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employeesAmazon RDS
- There should be a proper listing of all parameter groups alongside the instances that they are attached to. This would help to see which instances would be affected if a parameter group is changed.
- RDS should allow SUPER privilege to the master user. A few advanced tasks(like getting a physical backup using MySQL Enterprise Backup) fail because SUPER privilege is not available for the master user.
- A few parameters are not modifiable in the parameter groups and the access to the server filesystem is not given. This should not be the case because as an advanced user, you might want to understand things a little deeper.
Software Developer
ezDIHealth, Wellness and Fitness, 201-500 employees
Usability
Amazon Athena
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS 8.7
Based on 5 answers
The vast majority of things you'd want to do in Amazon Relational Database Service are simple to accomplish and remarkably consistent across database engines. Pricing, scalability and monitoring are easy to configure. If I had one complaint, it's that database engine specific features are not well documented in AWS, requiring reading external documentation in order to use some database systems to the fullest. But for most use cases, the defaults available in AWS are simple, easy to use, and good enough.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Human Resources Company, 51-200 employeesSupport Rating
Amazon Athena
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS 8.9
Based on 25 answers
The product is fairly straight forward to use, and staff as well as knowledge base is pretty good for getting answers you may need. The product is a great, flexible alternative to adding to one's own in-house infrastructure. It's especially useful for environments that you aren't sure about the overall long term need. Amazon Relational Database Service is great for environments that once you determine the long term need, can be maintained by Amazon.
President, Principal
Klaxon IT SolutionsHospital & Health Care, 11-50 employees
Alternatives Considered
Amazon Athena
No answers on this topic
Amazon RDS
Amazon Relational Database Service will probably give you everything you need from a traditional manual DB setup, except everything is managed for you. The only downside is having to pay the premium for the service; however, the trade-off of not having to deal with the intricacies involved with database administration, make it well worth it for most.
Senior Software Engineer
RocketripComputer Software, 11-50 employees
Return on Investment
Amazon Athena
- Aided in decision making processes that has saved money for departments and the company.
- The program takes over doing the majority of the work that used to be manual for a lot of people. Fantastic time-saver.
- The program makes other programs not as useful as they once were, which helped save money.

Verified User
Director in Marketing
Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employeesAmazon RDS
- Switching back to RDS from Redshift has made my BI Dashboards much more performant (though again, we're not dealing with data in the magnitudes that justify the Redshift toolset).
- It has decreased our tech debt. Engineering has been much more straight forward.
- Our uptime has been improved by removing unnecessary data migration processes.
Senior Project Manager
OnMetricInternet, 11-50 employees
Screenshots
Amazon Athena
—Amazon RDS
Pricing Details
Amazon Athena
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Amazon Athena Editions & Modules
Edition
Price per Query | $5.001 |
---|
- per TB of Data Scanned
Additional Pricing Details
—Amazon RDS
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Optional
Free to try. Pay only for what you use with no minimum fee.
Amazon RDS Editions & Modules
Edition
Amazon RDS for MySQL | $0.29 ($0.58)1 |
---|---|
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL | $0.24 ($0.48)1 |
Amazon RDS for MariaDB | $0.25 ($0.50)1 |
Amazon RDS for Oracle | $0.482 ($0.964)1 |
Amazon RDS for SQL Server | $1.02 ($1.52)1 |
- per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)