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Databases · head to head

Amazon Redshift vs Canary Labs

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Databases

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Canary Labs logo

Canary Labs

Databases

Industrial process historian with published per-tag pricing and no client licence fees

From
$3000/year
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; Canary Labs pricing steps by tag band rather than actual tags, so a site sitting just above a threshold pays the next band in full; growth from 3,400 to 3,600 tags is a licence purchase, not a rounding error.
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Canary Labs covers Loss-less compression.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Amazon Redshift and Canary Labs actually diverge.

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Canary Labs differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftCanary Labs
Starting priceFree$3000/year
Pricing modelusage-basedPer tag band per year
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWebWindows, Web
Founded2012Unknown

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

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 Canary Labs

  • Loss-less compression
  • Unlimited clients
  • Store and forward
  • Views service
  • Sparkplug B
  • Calculation engine
  • Axiom
  • ODBC and REST

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Canary Labs

  • A manufacturer that needs a compliant historian but cannot justify a PI System enterprise agreementnot Amazon Redshift
  • A water utility replacing SCADA-embedded logging with a historian that survives the next SCADA replacementnot Amazon Redshift
  • An Ignition site that wants long-term storage and trending without paying per-client for dashboardsnot Amazon Redshift
  • A plant with regulatory data-retention obligations where swinging-door compression would not survive an auditnot 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

Canary Labs

  • Pricing steps by tag band rather than actual tags, so a site sitting just above a threshold pays the next band in full; growth from 3,400 to 3,600 tags is a licence purchase, not a rounding error.
  • CustomerCare at 18 percent of licence cost is effectively mandatory on perpetual licences because lapsing it removes upgrades, so the perpetual option is not really a one-time cost.
  • The storage format is proprietary; getting data out at volume means the ODBC connector, an additional 2,500 USD one-time or 1,000 USD a year, or writing against the REST API.
  • Canary is a small vendor with a limited partner network outside North America, so support coverage and integrator availability in Europe and Asia are thinner than for AVEVA or Ignition.
  • It is a Windows-only server product with no Linux or container deployment, which complicates placing collectors in modern edge estates.

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

Canary Labs

$3000/year
  • Subscription, 3,500 tags$3000/year
    • Unlimited Axiom clients
    • Unlimited Excel clients
    • Support and upgrades included
  • Perpetual, 3,500 tags$8730/one-time
    • 7,400 USD licence plus 1,330 USD first-year CustomerCare
    • CustomerCare renews at 18 percent of licence cost per year
    • Unlimited clients
  • Private cloud, 3,500 tags$12320/year
    • Hosted by Canary
    • 1,500 USD one-time setup fee per system
    • Scales to around 58,684 USD per year at 60,000 tags
  • Enterprise unlimited$undefined/year
    • Unlimited tags
    • Negotiated licensing terms
    • Quoted pricing

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 Canary Labs if

  • You need loss-less compression.
  • You work on Windows, Web.
  • You also want unlimited clients.
Canary Labs review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Canary Labs better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Canary Labs at $3000/year, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Canary Labs?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Redshift and $3000/year for Canary Labs.
Does Amazon Redshift or Canary Labs run on more platforms?
Amazon Redshift runs on Web. Canary Labs runs on Windows, Web.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?
Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Canary Labs starts at $3000/year.
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 Canary Labs is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Canary Labs cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Canary Labs covers Loss-less compression, Unlimited clients, Store and forward, Views service.

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
Canary Labs: What does Canary cost?

8,730 USD for a 3,500 tag perpetual system including first-year CustomerCare, or 3,000 USD a year on subscription.

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
Canary Labs: Are client licences extra?

No. Unlimited Axiom browser clients and unlimited Excel clients are included on every tier.

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
Canary Labs: Is perpetual cheaper than subscription?

Canary states perpetual pays off after roughly three years, and after that you still pay 18 percent CustomerCare annually.

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
Canary Labs: Does it use lossy compression?

No. Canary stores every collected value rather than approximating the trend, which matters for regulated data retention.

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