Amazon Athena vs. Azure Synapse Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Athena
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, customers can point Athena at their data stored in S3 and begin using standard SQL to run ad-hoc queries and get results in seconds. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to setup or manage, and customers pay only for the queries they run. You can use Athena to process logs, perform ad-hoc analysis, and run…
$5
per TB of Data Scanned
Azure Synapse Analytics
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Azure Synapse Analytics is described as the former Azure SQL Data Warehouse, evolved, and as a limitless analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives users the freedom to query data using either serverless or provisioned resources, at scale. Azure Synapse brings these two worlds together with a unified experience to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate BI and machine learning needs.
$4,700
per month 5000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Pricing
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Editions & Modules
Price per Query
$5.00
per TB of Data Scanned
Tier 1
$4,700
per month 5,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 2
$9,200
per month 10,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 3
$21,360
per month 24,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 4
$50,400
per month 60,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 5
$117,000
per month 150,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 6
$259,200
per month 360,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Considered Both Products
Amazon Athena
Chose Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena, a product from Amazon, competes with offerings from Google and Microsoft. Overall, I think your database choice depends on some of the other applications you are running at your company. For example, if you are using Microsoft Power BI for reporting needs, you …
Azure Synapse Analytics

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Athena
8.5
3 Ratings
3% below category average
Azure Synapse Analytics
-
Ratings
Automatic software patching8.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Database scalability8.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated backups7.73 Ratings00 Ratings
Database security provisions9.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics8.73 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic host deployment9.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Small Businesses
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(3 ratings)
8.2
(9 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon AthenaAzure Synapse Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
If you are looking to take a lot of the traditional "database administration" work off someone's plate, going with Amazon Athena certainly has "no code" options to optimize lots of database tasks. I would say this option is less appropriate if you have other Microsoft things at play, such as Power BI.
Read full review
Microsoft
It's well suited for large, fastly growing, and frequently changing data warehouses (e.g., in startups). It's also suited for companies that want a single, relatively easy-to-use, centralized cloud service for all their data needs. Larger, more structured organizations could still benefit from this service by using Synapse Dedicated SQL Pools, knowing that costs will be much higher than other solutions. I think this product is not suited for smaller, simpler workloads (where an Azure SQL Database and a Data Factory could be enough) or very large scenarios, where it may be better to build custom infrastructure.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Nested Schemas like JSON data structure
  • Ability to adapt the data model to fit your queries better
  • Performance Improvement
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Create data pipelines to connect with multiple data workspace(s) and external data
  • Ability to connect with Azure Data Lake (sequentially) for data warehousing
  • Being able to manage connections and create integration runtimes (for onPrem data capture)
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Query manager can incoperate GUI based query designer
  • Auto-completion engine sometimes overwrite the query
  • Time range selection should be implicit
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It takes some time to setup a proper SQL Datawarehouse architecture. Without proper SSIS/automation scripts, this can be a very daunting task.
  • It takes a lot of foresight when designing a Data Warehouse. If not properly designed, it can be very troublesome to use and/or modify later on.
  • It takes a lot of effort to maintain. Businesses are continually changing. With that, a full time staff member or more will be required to maintain the SQL Data Warehouse.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The data warehouse portion is very much like old style on-prem SQL server, so most SQL skills one has mastered carry over easily. Azure Data Factory has an easy drag and drop system which allows quick building of pipelines with minimal coding. The Spark portion is the only really complex portion, but if there's an in-house python expert, then the Spark portion is also quiet useable.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft does its best to support Synapse. More and more articles are being added to the documentation, providing more useful information on best utilizing its features. The examples provided work well for basic knowledge, but more complex examples should be added to further assist in discovering the vast abilities that the system has.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Athena, a product from Amazon, competes with offerings from Google and Microsoft. Overall, I think your database choice depends on some of the other applications you are running at your company. For example, if you are using Microsoft Power BI for reporting needs, you might want to consider going the Azure route.
Read full review
Microsoft
When client is already having or using Azure then it’s wise to go with Synapse rather than using Snowflake. We got a lot of help from Microsoft consultants and Microsoft partners while implementing our EDW via Synapse and support is easily available via Microsoft resources and blogs. I don’t see that with Snowflake
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Basically, the billing is predictable, and this all about it.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Easy to query terabytes of data with faster response
  • Pricing model is also cheap
  • No indexing and partitioning
Read full review
Microsoft
  • We have had an improvement in our overall processing time
  • Cost was much lower than most of its competitors
  • Our reporting needs have grown and housing the data here has been great
Read full review
ScreenShots