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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon Redshift

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AAmazon Redshift is a hosted data warehouse solution, from Amazon Web Services.

    $0.24

    per GB per month

    Azure SQL Database

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AAzure SQL Database is Microsoft's relational database as a service (DBaaS).

    $0.50

    Per Hour

    Pricing
    Amazon RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    Editions & Modules
    Redshift Managed Storage
    $0.24
    per GB per month
    Current Generation
    $0.25 - $13.04
    per hour
    Previous Generation
    $0.25 - $4.08
    per hour
    Redshift Spectrum
    $5.00
    per terabyte of data scanned
    2 vCORE
    $0.5044
    Per Hour
    6 vCORE
    $1.5131
    Per Hour
    10 vCORE
    $2.52
    Per Hour
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Amazon RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    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 RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    Considered Both Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose Amazon Redshift
    Azure SQL Database was discarded because of a less attractive licensing, costs, plus its integrates poorly with many of the Azure offerings as say Azure Data Factory - it is not a true ETL yet. Also, the rest of the tools used were of Open Source type and it did not look like a …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Redshift
    Redshift is better cost wise and also since the whole ecosystem is set in AWS, it is wise to use redshift
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Redshift
    As our applications are hosted on AWS service, Redshift is the best option for us. Also, it provide a near to real-time performance on limited datasets and less complex queries. High availability is the major concern for any growing business and AWS is the best option for this. …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose Azure SQL Database
    I would say MySQL in either Aurora or MariaDB form come close however, Azure SQL Database has a more streamlined approach to delivering a consistent programmability model, supported drivers and feature set.
    Azure SQL Database T-SQL is advantageous and more complete than SQL …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    78%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    17 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    82%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    78%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
    Features
    Amazon RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    Database-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Amazon Redshift and Azure SQL Database
    Feature
    Amazon Redshift
    -
    Ratings
    Azure SQL Database
    7.2
    32 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Automatic software patching00 Ratings6.330 Ratings
    Database scalability00 Ratings7.832 Ratings
    Automated backups00 Ratings7.832 Ratings
    Database security provisions00 Ratings8.832 Ratings
    Monitoring and metrics00 Ratings6.831 Ratings
    Automatic host deployment00 Ratings6.127 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    MongoDB Atlas
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Snowflake
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Azure Database
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Snowflake
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Google Cloud SQL
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (38 ratings)
    8.0
    (32 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (10 ratings)
    8.5
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon RedshiftAzure SQL Database
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    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)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We have found it's a great alternative for making older legacy applications work with online databases instead of only on-premises databases. We've converted over a dozen applications this way, and it has allowed our clients to have a distributed workforce using their applications without incurring the expense of a complete application rewrite.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • [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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Maintenance is always an issue, so using a cloud solution saves a lot of trouble.
    • On premise solutions always suffer from fragmented implementations here and there, where several "dba's" keep track of security and maintenance. With a cloud database it's much easier to keep a central overview.
    • Security options in SQL database are next level... data masking, hiding sensitive data where always neglected on premise, whereas you'll get this automatically in the cloud.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • One needs to be aware that some T-SQL features are simply not available.
    • The programmatic access to server, trace flags, hardware from within Azure SQL Database is taken away (for a good reason).
    • No SQL Agent so your jobs need to be orchestrated differently.
    • The maximum concurrent logins maybe an unexpected problem.
    • Sudden disconnects.
    • The developers and admin must study the capacity and tier usage limits https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-subscription-service-limits otherwise some errors or even transaction aborts never seen before can occur.
    • Only one Latin Collation choice.
    • There is no way to debug T-SQL ( a big drawback in my point of view).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    This is best solution as a DBA one could expect from a service provider and as a cloud service, it removes all your hassles.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    The interfaces are intuitive once you are familiar with all the functions. The ability to use different tools to interact with the platform, such as directly via a browser or code editors such as VS Code or Visual Studio is a great option and allows for integrating withn the project and other testing and developing tools.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We give the support a high rating simply because every time we've had issues or questions, representatives were in contact with us quickly. Without fail, our issues/questions were handled in a timely matter. That kind of response is integral when client data integrity and availability is in question. There is also a wealth of documentation for resolving issues on your own.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We moved away from Oracle and NoSQL because we had been so reliant on them for the last 25 years, the pricing was too much and we were looking for a way to cut the cord. Snowflake is just too up in the air, feels like it is soon to be just another line item to add to your Azure subscription. Azure was just priced right, easy to migrate to and plenty of resources to hire to support/maintain it. Very easy to learn, too.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Amazon AWS
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Perfect for small and medium databases, being very cost effective.
    • As a Platform as a Service, there is no concern about patches, upgrades and end of life.
    • Be aware of security and network capabilities. The service cannot run in the VNET as Azure Virtual Machines do.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots