Softwr

Business Intelligence · head to head

Amazon QuickSight vs Amazon Redshift

Amazon QuickSight logo

Amazon QuickSight

Business Intelligence

Scalable, serverless BI by AWS

From
$3/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Databases

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: Amazon QuickSight reader and Reader Pro roles charged separately at $3 and $20/month; Amazon Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon QuickSight covers SPICE In-memory Engine, Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon QuickSight and Amazon Redshift differ
AttributeAmazon QuickSightAmazon Redshift
Starting price$3/monthFree
Pricing modelper-userusage-based
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsAWSWeb
CategoryBusiness IntelligenceDatabases
Founded20062012

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

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 Amazon QuickSight

  • SPICE In-memory Engine
  • ML Insights
  • Natural Language Queries
  • Embedded Analytics
  • Pay-per-session
  • Redshift
  • Athena
  • Aurora

Only in Amazon Redshift

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

Both cover

  • S3
  • Web support

What people use each for

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

Amazon QuickSight

  • Business intelligence
  • Dashboard creationnot Amazon Redshift
  • Data visualizationnot Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift

  • Business intelligence
  • Data warehousingnot Amazon QuickSight
  • Real-time analyticsnot Amazon QuickSight
  • Reportingnot Amazon QuickSight
  • Machine learningnot Amazon QuickSight

Both are used for business intelligence, on those jobs the choice comes down to price and fit rather than capability.

Where each one falls short

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

Amazon QuickSight

  • Reader and Reader Pro roles charged separately at $3 and $20/month
  • Author and Author Pro roles charged at $24 and $40/month
  • $250/month infrastructure fee required if Pro users or Q&A enabled
  • SPICE storage charged at $0.38/GB monthly (10 GB included)
  • Pixel-perfect reports start at $500/month for 500 monthly units
  • Alerts charged at $0.05-$0.50 per 1,000 metrics evaluated

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

Amazon QuickSight

$3/month
  • Reader$3/month
    • Dashboard viewing only
  • Reader Pro$20/month
    • Enhanced reader capabilities
  • Author$24/month
    • Dashboard creation and editing
  • Author Pro$40/month
    • Advanced authoring features

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 Amazon QuickSight if

  • You need spice in-memory engine.
  • You work on AWS.
  • You also want ml insights.
Amazon QuickSight 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 Amazon QuickSight or Amazon Redshift better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon QuickSight starts at $3/month and Amazon Redshift at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon QuickSight or Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $3/month for Amazon QuickSight and Free for Amazon Redshift.
Does Amazon QuickSight or Amazon Redshift run on more platforms?
Amazon QuickSight runs on AWS. 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. Amazon QuickSight starts at $3/month.
What is Amazon QuickSight best used for?
Amazon QuickSight is most often used for business intelligence, dashboard creation, data visualization. Of those, dashboard creation and data visualization are not what Amazon Redshift is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon QuickSight do that Amazon Redshift cannot?
Amazon QuickSight covers SPICE In-memory Engine, ML Insights, Natural Language Queries, Embedded Analytics. Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Both handle S3, Web support.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Amazon QuickSight: What does Amazon QuickSight cost per user?

QuickSight pricing varies by user role. Readers start at $3/month, Reader Pro at $20/month, Authors at $24/month, and Author Pro at $40/month. All prices are per user per month.

Source
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 QuickSight: Does QuickSight charge an infrastructure fee?

Yes, QuickSight charges an infrastructure fee of $250/month per account if the account has at least one Pro user, has Q&A enabled via topics, or has dashboard Q&A enabled.

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 QuickSight: What are QuickSight's session capacity pricing options?

Session capacity pricing starts at $250/month for 500 sessions. Annual plans range from $20,000/year for 50,000 sessions to $258,000/year for 1,600,000 sessions, with volume discounts reducing unit costs from $0.50 to $0.16 per additional session.

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 QuickSight: How much does additional SPICE storage cost?

Additional SPICE storage beyond the included 10 GB costs $0.38 per GB per month. Authors receive 10 GB included, but Readers do not.

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
Share

Related pages

More on Amazon QuickSight

More on Amazon Redshift

Keep looking

Other head to heads