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Database & Data Management · head to head

Amazon Redshift vs Brex

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Database & Data Management

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Brex logo

Brex

Accounting & Finance

The financial stack for growing businesses

From
$29/month
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 Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery; Brex the free Essentials tier is limited to two legal entities
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Brex covers Corporate cards.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Brex differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftBrex
Starting priceFree$29/month
Pricing modelusage-basedfreemium
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWebWeb, Ios, Android
CategoryDatabase & Data ManagementAccounting & Finance
Founded20122017

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 Redshift

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

Only in Brex

  • Corporate cards
  • Business accounts
  • Expense management
  • Bill pay
  • Travel
  • QuickBooks
  • NetSuite
  • Xero

Both cover

  • Web support

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Brex

  • Corporate cards with spend controls for startupsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Expense management and reimbursementsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Travel booking inside the spend platformnot Amazon Redshift
  • Bill pay and accounting system syncnot Amazon Redshift
  • Multi-entity spend management on the paid tiersnot Amazon Redshift

Where each one falls short

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

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

Brex

  • The free Essentials tier is limited to two legal entities
  • Premium is $12 per user per month, so cost scales with headcount using the card
  • Enterprise and Smart Card pricing is not published
  • Eligibility criteria are not stated anywhere on the pricing page, which matters for a product that extends credit

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Brex

$29/month
  • EssentialsFree
    • Corporate cards
    • Expense management
    • Bill pay
  • Premium$12/month
    • Advanced controls
    • Custom approvals
    • Travel booking

Which should you pick?

Choose Amazon Redshift if

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

Choose Brex if

  • You need corporate cards.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want business accounts.
Brex review

Questions people ask

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