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What's the Difference Between Amazon Redshift and Redshift Serverless?

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

Compare side-by-side

Comparisons
Amazon Redshift
Redshift Serverless
Category

Analytics, Data warehouse

Analytics, Serverless Data Warehouse

Description

Fast, simple, cost-effective data warehousing

Run analytics and get insights from data without managing data warehouse infrastructure.

Best for
  • Data warehousing
  • Business intelligence
  • Log analysis
  • Big data analytics
  • Ad-hoc analytics
  • Development workloads
  • Variable workloads
  • Data exploration
Key features
  • Columnar storage
  • Massively parallel processing
  • Redshift Serverless
  • Data sharing
  • ML integration
  • Auto scaling
  • Pay-per-use
  • No cluster management
  • Data sharing
  • ML integration
Pricing model

On-Demand, Reserved, or Serverless

Pay per RPU-hour of compute used

Free tier

Yes

Yes

Expert take

“Redshift is optimized for analytical workloads; it uses columnar storage and massively parallel processing to scan terabytes in seconds. Use it when your queries involve aggregations, joins across large tables, and complex calculations that power dashboards and reports.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Redshift Serverless removes cluster management entirely. You run queries and pay per RPU-second, scaling automatically based on workload complexity without provisioning nodes.”
— Oleksii Bebych, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

Product page

When to use Amazon Redshift or Redshift Serverless

Use Amazon Redshift when:

  • Data warehousing
  • Business intelligence
  • Log analysis
  • Big data analytics

Learn more about Amazon Redshift »

Use Redshift Serverless when:

  • Ad-hoc analytics
  • Development workloads
  • Variable workloads
  • Data exploration

Learn more about Redshift Serverless »

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