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Airbase vs Amazon Redshift

Airbase logo

Airbase

Software

The first all-in-one spend management platform

From
$29/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Software

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Airbase airbase was acquired by Paylocity; its pricing page now redirects to paylocity.com/pricing and the product is marketed as 'Airbase, a Paylocity Company' within Paylocity's HCM platform rather than as a standalone product.; Amazon Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery
  • They diverge on capability: Airbase covers Corporate cards, Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Airbase and Amazon Redshift actually diverge.

Attributes where Airbase and Amazon Redshift differ
AttributeAirbaseAmazon Redshift
Starting price$29/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionusage-based
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidWeb
Founded20172012

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Unknown).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Airbase

  • Corporate cards
  • Bill payments
  • Expense management
  • Procurement
  • Approvals
  • NetSuite
  • Sage Intacct
  • QuickBooks

Only in Amazon Redshift

  • Columnar Storage
  • Massively Parallel
  • Machine Learning
  • AQUA Acceleration
  • Data Sharing
  • Federated Query
  • Concurrency Scaling
  • S3

Both cover

  • Web support

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Airbase

  • Spend managementnot Amazon Redshift
  • Expense reportingnot Amazon Redshift
  • Vendor paymentsnot Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift

  • Business intelligencenot Airbase
  • Data warehousingnot Airbase
  • Real-time analyticsnot Airbase
  • Reportingnot Airbase
  • Machine learningnot Airbase

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Airbase

  • Airbase was acquired by Paylocity; its pricing page now redirects to paylocity.com/pricing and the product is marketed as 'Airbase, a Paylocity Company' within Paylocity's HCM platform rather than as a standalone product.

Amazon Redshift

  • On-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery
  • Requires significant manual tuning including managing concurrency scaling costs and configuring Workload Management queues
  • Performance degrades without proper design of distribution keys and sort keys
  • Limited elastic resize options - can only halve or double current cluster size
  • AWS lock-in makes it unsuitable for multi-cloud architectures

Pricing, plan by plan

Airbase

$29/month
  • StandardFree
    • Corporate cards
    • Expense reports
    • Bill pay
  • Premium$10/month
    • Advanced approvals
    • NetSuite sync
    • Procurement
  • Enterprise$undefined/month
    • Custom workflows
    • API access
    • Dedicated support

Amazon Redshift

Free
  • Free TrialFree
    • 750 DC2.Large hours
    • 2 months free
    • Full features
  • On-Demand$0.25/hour
    • Pay per node hour
    • All features
    • Standard support

Which should you pick?

Choose Airbase if

  • You need corporate cards.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want bill payments.
Airbase review

Choose Amazon Redshift if

  • You need columnar storage.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want massively parallel.
Amazon Redshift review

Questions people ask

Is Airbase or Amazon Redshift better?
Neither clearly leads. Airbase starts at $29/month and Amazon Redshift at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Airbase or Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $29/month for Airbase and Free for Amazon Redshift.
Does Airbase or Amazon Redshift run on more platforms?
Airbase runs on Web, Ios, Android. Amazon Redshift runs on Web.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?
Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Airbase starts at $29/month.
What is Airbase best used for?
Airbase is most often used for spend management, expense reporting, vendor payments. Of those, spend management and expense reporting are not what Amazon Redshift is typically brought in for.
What can Airbase do that Amazon Redshift cannot?
Airbase covers Corporate cards, Bill payments, Expense management, Procurement. Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Both handle Web support.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Amazon Redshift: What deployment options does Amazon Redshift offer?

Redshift offers Provisioned Cluster (with RA3 or DC2 nodes) and Serverless options to match varying workloads. The new Redshift RG instance family, powered by Graviton, delivers 2.4x faster performance than RA3 at 30% lower cost per vCPU.

Source
Amazon Redshift: What does Amazon Redshift cost?

Provisioned cluster pricing: RA3 on-demand starts at $1.086/hour for ra3.xlplus. Serverless costs approximately $0.375 per RPU-hour with 4-RPU minimum (roughly $1.50/hour active workload). Managed storage costs $0.024/GB-month.

Source
Amazon Redshift: Does Redshift work with data lakes?

Yes, Redshift's integrated data lake query engine processes workloads on Apache Iceberg tables and other supported formats in Amazon S3, allowing you to run SQL analytics across your data warehouse and data lake from the same engine.

Source
Amazon Redshift: Is there a free tier for Amazon Redshift?

AWS offers a free trial with $300 USD in Serverless credits valid for 90 days, but Redshift is not part of the permanent AWS Free Tier.

Source
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