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What's the Difference Between Amazon Athena and Amazon EMR?

Compare Amazon Athena and Amazon EMR side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

Compare side-by-side

Comparisons
Amazon Athena
Amazon EMR
Category

Analytics, Query & interactive analytics

Analytics, Big data processing

Description

Service to query data in S3 using SQL

Easily run big data frameworks

Best for
  • Ad-hoc queries
  • Log analysis
  • Data lake analytics
  • Business intelligence
  • Big data processing
  • Machine learning
  • ETL
  • Clickstream analysis
  • Genomics
Key features
  • Serverless
  • Standard SQL
  • Federated queries
  • ACID transactions
  • Apache Spark integration
  • Apache Spark
  • Apache Hive
  • Presto
  • EMR Serverless
  • EMR on EKS
Pricing model

Pay per query (per TB scanned)

Pay per instance hour + EBS storage

Free tier

Yes

No

Expert take

“Athena is the fastest path to querying data in S3 without any infrastructure. Partition your data by date or key columns and use columnar formats like Parquet to cut scan volume and costs dramatically. For recurring queries over the same data, Redshift will be more cost-effective.”
— Riku Kobayashi, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“EMR is the go-to for teams already invested in Spark, Hive, or Presto. EMR Serverless removes cluster sizing decisions entirely; you submit jobs and pay per vCPU-second. For teams that want SQL-only without Spark expertise, Athena or Redshift are simpler paths.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

Product page

When to use Amazon Athena or Amazon EMR

Use Amazon Athena when:

  • Ad-hoc queries
  • Log analysis
  • Data lake analytics
  • Business intelligence

Learn more about Amazon Athena »

Use Amazon EMR when:

  • Big data processing
  • Machine learning
  • ETL
  • Clickstream analysis
  • Genomics

Learn more about Amazon EMR »

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