Is Amazon Redshift or Paragon better?

Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Paragon at $299/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Paragon?

Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Redshift and $299/month for Paragon.

Does Amazon Redshift or Paragon run on more platforms?

Amazon Redshift runs on Web. Paragon runs on Web, Embedded.

Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?

Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Paragon starts at $299/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 Paragon is typically brought in for.

What can Amazon Redshift do that Paragon cannot?

Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Paragon covers Embedded workflows, Native integrations, Workflow builder, Error handling. Both handle Web support.

Software · head to head

Amazon Redshift vs Paragon

Amazon Redshift

Software

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Paragon

Software

Embedded integration platform for SaaS

From: $299/month
Rated: -

Full review Website

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; Paragon no price is published for either plan, and both require a quote
They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Paragon covers Embedded workflows.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Paragon differ
Attribute	Amazon Redshift	Paragon
Starting price	Free	$299/month
Pricing model	usage-based	subscription
Free tier	Yes	No
Platforms	Web	Web, Embedded
Founded	2012	2021

Identical on both: 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 Paragon

Embedded workflows
Native integrations
Workflow builder
Error handling
Monitoring
Analytics
Webhooks
500+ apps

Both cover

Web support

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

Business intelligencenot Paragon
Data warehousingnot Paragon
Real-time analyticsnot Paragon
Reportingnot Paragon
Machine learningnot Paragon

Paragon

Embedding third party integrations into a SaaS productnot Amazon Redshift
Managing customer facing connectors without building each onenot 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

Paragon

No price is published for either plan, and both require a quote
Cost scales with the number of customer tenants using the integrations, so the bill follows an end customer count rather than the vendor's own usage
SAML SSO, self hosting, dynamic field mapping and SLAs are all Enterprise only

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

Paragon

$299/month

Starter$299/month
- 50 integrations
- Basic support
Growth$999/month
- 200 integrations
- Priority support
Enterprise$5000/month
- Unlimited integrations
- Dedicated support

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 Paragon if

You need embedded workflows.
You work on Web, Embedded.
You also want native integrations.

Paragon review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Paragon better?: Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Paragon at $299/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Paragon?: Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Redshift and $299/month for Paragon.
Does Amazon Redshift or Paragon run on more platforms?: Amazon Redshift runs on Web. Paragon runs on Web, Embedded.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?: Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Paragon starts at $299/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 Paragon is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Paragon cannot?: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Paragon covers Embedded workflows, Native integrations, Workflow builder, Error handling. 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

Amazon Redshift vs Paragon

Amazon Redshift

Paragon

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Amazon Redshift

Only in Paragon

Both cover

What people use each for

Amazon Redshift

Paragon

Where each one falls short

Amazon Redshift

Paragon

Pricing, plan by plan

Amazon Redshift

Paragon

Which should you pick?

Choose Amazon Redshift if

Choose Paragon if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Amazon Redshift

More on Paragon

Keep looking

Other head to heads