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Amazon Redshift vs Qdrant

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Software

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Qdrant logo

Qdrant

Software

High-performance vector database for similarity search and embedding-based retrieval

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; Qdrant free tier extremely limited (0.5 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 4GB disk); suitable only for experiments

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Qdrant differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftQdrant
Pricing modelusage-basedfreemium
PlatformsWebCloud (AWS, GCP, Azure), Kubernetes, Self-hosted, Edge (beta), Serverless (coming)
Founded2012Unknown

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

Nothing recorded that Amazon Redshift does not also cover.

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Qdrant

  • Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) backends for LLM applicationsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Semantic search across large document corporanot Amazon Redshift
  • Multimodal retrieval (text, images, video) for recommendation systemsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Similarity-based product or content recommendationsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Real-time vector indexing for streaming embedding datanot 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

Qdrant

  • Free tier extremely limited (0.5 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 4GB disk); suitable only for experiments
  • Standard and Premium pricing usage-based; specific costs not published; requires calculator or quote
  • Requires understanding of embeddings and vector search concepts; not suitable for SQL-only teams
  • Early-stage serverless offering (coming soon) suggests maturity gaps in that deployment model

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

Qdrant

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Single-node cluster
    • 0.5 vCPU
    • 1GB RAM
  • Standard$null/usage-based
    • Dedicated resources
    • Flexible scaling
    • High availability
  • Premium$null/minimum spend
    • SSO and SAML
    • Private VPC links
    • 99.9% uptime SLA

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 Qdrant if

  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure), Kubernetes, Self-hosted, Edge (beta), Serverless (coming).
Qdrant review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Qdrant better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Qdrant at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Qdrant?
Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Qdrant at Free.
Does Amazon Redshift or Qdrant run on more platforms?
Amazon Redshift runs on Web. Qdrant runs on Cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure), Kubernetes, Self-hosted, Edge (beta), Serverless (coming).
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 Qdrant is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Qdrant cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration.

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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