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Database & Data Management · head to head

Amazon Redshift vs Elastic APM

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Database & Data Management

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Elastic APM logo

Elastic APM

Log Management

Application Performance Monitoring from Elastic

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Amazon Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery; Elastic APM pricing is not published on the product page; cost follows the underlying Elastic deployment rather than being quoted per host or per service
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Elastic APM covers Performance monitoring.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Amazon Redshift and Elastic APM actually diverge.

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Elastic APM differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftElastic APM
Pricing modelusage-basedopen-source
PlatformsWebWeb, Api
CategoryDatabase & Data ManagementLog Management
Founded20122011

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Elastic APM

  • Performance monitoring
  • Error tracking
  • Transaction tracing
  • Custom metrics
  • API
  • Webhooks
  • REST
  • Api support

Both cover

  • Web support

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Elastic APM

  • Distributed tracing across microservicesnot Amazon Redshift
  • Auto-instrumenting Java, .NET, Python, Go, Node.js, Ruby, PHP and C++ servicesnot Amazon Redshift
  • OpenTelemetry-native collection through the Elastic distributionsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Correlating latency and errors with machine learningnot Amazon Redshift
  • Monitoring LLM calls alongside application tracesnot 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

Elastic APM

  • Pricing is not published on the product page; cost follows the underlying Elastic deployment rather than being quoted per host or per service
  • Self-managed deployment means running and scaling Elasticsearch yourself
  • Serverless does not carry every capability the hosted option does

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

Elastic APM

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Performance monitoring
    • Error tracking
    • Transaction tracing

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 Elastic APM if

  • You need performance monitoring.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Api.
  • You also want error tracking.
Elastic APM review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Elastic APM better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Elastic APM at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Elastic APM?
Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Elastic APM at Free.
Does Amazon Redshift or Elastic APM run on more platforms?
Amazon Redshift runs on Web. Elastic APM runs on Web, Api.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
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 Elastic APM is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Elastic APM cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Elastic APM covers Performance monitoring, Error tracking, Transaction tracing, Custom metrics. 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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