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Amazon Redshift vs Harvest Forecast

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Software

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Harvest Forecast logo

Harvest Forecast

Software

Simple visual resource planning

From
$5/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; Harvest Forecast the free plan allows a single seat and 2 projects
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Harvest Forecast covers Visual scheduling.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Amazon Redshift and Harvest Forecast actually diverge.

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Harvest Forecast differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftHarvest Forecast
Starting priceFree$5/month
Pricing modelusage-basedsubscription
Free tierYesNo
Founded20122006

Identical on both: platforms (Web), 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 Amazon Redshift

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

Only in Harvest Forecast

  • Visual scheduling
  • Capacity planning
  • Project assignments
  • Utilization reports
  • Harvest integration
  • Harvest
  • Google Calendar
  • iCal

Both cover

  • Web support

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Harvest Forecast

  • Time tracking and invoicing against client projectsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Forecasting team capacity and scheduling worknot 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

Harvest Forecast

  • The free plan allows a single seat and 2 projects
  • Paid plans bill per seat with usage charged beyond the base rate rather than being purely flat
  • The Enterprise plan is $14 per seat per month against $9 on Teams
  • The 20% saving requires annual payment
  • Enterprise Plus is custom priced

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

Harvest Forecast

$5/month
  • Per seat$5/month
    • Visual planning
    • Harvest integration
    • Team scheduling

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 Harvest Forecast if

  • You need visual scheduling.
  • You also want capacity planning.
Harvest Forecast review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Harvest Forecast better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Harvest Forecast at $5/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Harvest Forecast?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Redshift and $5/month for Harvest Forecast.
Does Amazon Redshift or Harvest Forecast run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?
Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Harvest Forecast starts at $5/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 Harvest Forecast is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Harvest Forecast cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Harvest Forecast covers Visual scheduling, Capacity planning, Project assignments, Utilization reports. 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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