What users are saying about
Top Rated
135 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9 out of 100
Based on 135 reviews and ratings
178 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.7 out of 100
Based on 178 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
Database-as-a-Service
8.7
Amazon RDS
87%
Amazon Redshift
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) ranks higher in 6/6 features
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) ranks higher in 6/6 features
Automatic software patching
9.1
91%
16 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Database scalability
9.6
96%
16 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Automated backups
9.3
93%
16 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Database security provisions
8.7
87%
15 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics
7.7
77%
16 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Automatic host deployment
7.9
79%
12 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
- Amazon Redshift is rated higher in 1 area: Usability
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
Amazon RDS
93%
51 Ratings
9.2
Amazon Redshift
92%
34 Ratings
Usability
9.9
Amazon RDS
99%
4 Ratings
10.0
Amazon Redshift
100%
9 Ratings
Support Rating
9.3
Amazon RDS
93%
24 Ratings
9.2
Amazon Redshift
92%
12 Ratings
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon RDS
N/A
0 Ratings
10.0
Amazon Redshift
100%
1 Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon RDS
Whether your organization is [an] early startup or large company AWS RDS fits in most of the cases such as 1. Easy to start, setup, used by [a] few or large developers team. 2. You can easily scale DB [instances] when your business required scaling as a startup or pay only for [users] to optimize cost as [a] large organization. 3. If your application requires SQL Server, Oracle, or Maria DB then you should use AWS RDS instance. 4. Your application requires better availability and security of data you can use AWS RDS instance. When AWS RDS is not recommended: 1. You need automatic scaling or capacity flexibility as request load gradually increases, better to use Amazon Aurora DB in this case.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Financial Services Company, 201-500 employeesAmazon Redshift
If the number of connections is expected to be low, but the amounts of data are large or projected to grow it is a good solutions especially if there is previous exposure to PostgreSQL. Speaking of Postgres, Redshift is based on several versions old releases of PostgreSQL so the developers would not be able to take advantage of some of the newer SQL language features. The queries need some fine-tuning still, indexing is not provided, but playing with sorting keys becomes necessary. Lastly, there is no notion of the Primary Key in Redshift so the business must be prepared to explain why duplication occurred (must be vigilant for)
Senior Business Intelligence Consultant
SermoResearch, 201-500 employees
Pros
Amazon RDS
- Setting up and managing a new RDS is just a matter of few clicks.
- Maintaining different version of backup is just like a matter of turning on and off.
- Automatic minor update of database.
- Best restore:- You can even restore to 1 second before time.
Software Engineer
AtlantisInternet, 11-50 employees
Amazon Redshift
- [Amazon] Redshift has Distribution Keys. If you correctly define them on your tables, it improves Query performance. For instance, we can define Mapping/Meta-data tables with Distribution-All Key, so that it gets replicated across all the nodes, for fast joins and fast query results.
- [Amazon] Redshift has Sort Keys. If you correctly define them on your tables along with above Distribution Keys, it further improves your Query performance. It also has Composite Sort Keys and Interleaved Sort Keys, to support various use cases
- [Amazon] Redshift is forked out of PostgreSQL DB, and then AWS added "MPP" (Massively Parallel Processing) and "Column Oriented" concepts to it, to make it a powerful data store.
- [Amazon] Redshift has "Analyze" operation that could be performed on tables, which will update the stats of the table in leader node. This is sort of a ledger about which data is stored in which node and which partition with in a node. Up to date stats improves Query performance.
Staff Data Engineer
Hearst AutosMarketing & Advertising, 501-1000 employees
Cons
Amazon RDS
- You don't have os-level or hardware-level access to the system, so all your performance tuning needs to be done within your application or within the parameters of the database engine that amazon allows you to customize.
- Customizations/Extensions to the database engines are impossible, as you don't have OS-level access.
- Migrating in/out of RDS with zero down time can be relatively challenging from a configuration and execution perspective, depending on your infrastructure.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employeesAmazon Redshift
- We've experienced some problems with hanging queries on Redshift Spectrum/external tables. We've had to roll back to and old version of Redshift while we wait for AWS to provide a patch.
- Redshift's dialect is most similar to that of PostgreSQL 8. It lacks many modern features and data types.
- Constraints are not enforced. We must rely on other means to verify the integrity of transformed tables.
Data Scientist
Wonder (AskWonder.com)Research, 11-50 employees
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.
Starting Price
$0 per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
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)
Additional Pricing Details
—Amazon Redshift
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$0 per hour
Amazon Redshift Editions & Modules
Edition
Current Generation | $0.25 - $13.041 |
---|---|
Previous Generation | $0.25 - $4.081 |
Redshift Spectrum | $5.002 |
Redshift Managed Storage | $0.243 |
- per hour
- per terabyte of data scanned
- per GB per month
Additional Pricing Details
—Usability
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS 9.9
Based on 4 answers
I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).
Senior Devops Engineer
SOTIComputer & Network Security, 1001-5000 employees
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift 10.0
Based on 9 answers
Just very happy with the product, it fits our needs perfectly. Amazon pioneered the cloud and we have had a positive experience using RedShift. Really cool to be able to see your data housed and to be able to query and perform administrative tasks with ease.
Senior Developer
American Board of Internal MedicineNon-Profit Organization Management, 201-500 employees
Support Rating
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS 9.3
Based on 24 answers
I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.
Senior Systems Reliability Engineer
The Walt Disney CompanyEntertainment, 10,001+ employees
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift 9.2
Based on 12 answers
The support was great and helped us in a timely fashion. We did use a lot of online forums as well, but the official documentation was an ongoing one, and it did take more time for us to look through it. We would have probably chosen a competitor product had it not been for the great support

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Financial Services Company, 5001-10,000 employeesAlternatives Considered
Amazon RDS
[Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)] is much better to have everything in the cloud instead of having it on-premise once you can get all the benefits from Cloud. Of course, it can be a bit expensive if your company it's not growing anymore but if you check it in detail, you can see that the scalability of Cloud makes a lot of sense and also the reliability.

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 11-50 employeesAmazon Redshift
Than Vertica: Redshift is cheaper and AWS integrated (which was a plus because the whole company was on AWS).
Than BigQuery: Redshift has a standard SQL interface, though recently I heard good things about BigQuery and would try it out again.
Than Hive: Hive is great if you are in the PB+ range, but latencies tend to be much slower than Redshift and it is not suited for ad-hoc applications.
Than BigQuery: Redshift has a standard SQL interface, though recently I heard good things about BigQuery and would try it out again.
Than Hive: Hive is great if you are in the PB+ range, but latencies tend to be much slower than Redshift and it is not suited for ad-hoc applications.

Verified User
Director in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 1001-5000 employeesContract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon RDS
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift 10.0
Based on 1 answer
Redshift is relatively cheaper tool but since the pricing is dynamic, there is always a risk of exceeding the cost. Since most of our team is using it as self serve and there is no continuous tracking by a dedicated team, it really needs time & effort on analyst's side to know how much it is going to cost.
Analytics Lead
Monotype Solutions IndiaInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees
Return on Investment
Amazon RDS
- RDS has made sure that we don't spend a lot of time resolving issues that are not even remotely relevant to our business use-cases. It has thus made the life of DB administrators easy which allows them to explore other avenues as well.
- Using RDS for around 10 years now, we have never had an issue BECAUSE of RDS. It is a very reliable service.
Software Developer
ezDIHealth, Wellness and Fitness, 201-500 employees
Amazon Redshift
- Our company is moving to the AWS infrastructure, and in this context moving the warehouse environments to Redshift sounds logical regardless of the cost.
- Development organizations have to operate in the Dev/Ops mode where they build and support their apps at the same time.
- Hard to estimate the overall ROI of moving to Redshift from my position. However, running Redshift seems to be inexpensive compared to all the licensing and hardware costs we had on our RDBMS platform before Redshift.
Principal Data Architect
IntuitComputer Software, 5001-10,000 employees