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Amazon Redshift vs RisingWave

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Databases

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
RisingWave logo

RisingWave

Databases

Streaming database that maintains incremental materialised views in SQL instead of Flink jobs

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; RisingWave anything that does not fit SQL, such as custom windowing, complex event processing or heavy stateful logic, still needs Flink, so RisingWave often adds a system rather than removing one.
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, RisingWave covers SQL materialised views.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and RisingWave differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftRisingWave
Pricing modelusage-basedPer RisingWave Unit hour
PlatformsWebLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud
Founded2012Unknown

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

  • SQL materialised views
  • Postgres wire compatibility
  • Object storage state
  • Source connectors
  • Sink connectors
  • Iceberg tables
  • Watermarks and windowing
  • User defined functions

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

RisingWave

  • A team with Kafka topics that needs continuously fresh aggregates for a dashboard without standing up a Flink clusternot Amazon Redshift
  • A fraud or risk team maintaining rolling counters and joins across event streams expressed as SQL viewsnot Amazon Redshift
  • A company doing Postgres CDC into a real-time denormalised view for search or servingnot Amazon Redshift
  • An analytics group that wants streaming results landed directly into Apache Iceberg without a separate writer jobnot 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

RisingWave

  • Anything that does not fit SQL, such as custom windowing, complex event processing or heavy stateful logic, still needs Flink, so RisingWave often adds a system rather than removing one.
  • The Apache 2.0 community edition excludes premium features behind a licence key, and which capabilities sit on which side of that line moves between releases, so a self-hosted plan can be invalidated by an upgrade.
  • Long-running materialised views accumulate state in object storage, and cost and recovery time grow with retention in ways that are hard to forecast before you are in production.
  • The Postgres compatibility is protocol level; it is not a transactional Postgres and using it as a general purpose database, with point updates or high write concurrency, goes badly.
  • It is a comparatively young venture-funded project competing with Flink, Materialize and warehouse-native streaming, and the ecosystem of connectors, operators and third-party expertise is much thinner.

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

RisingWave

Free
  • Community EditionFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence, self-hosted
    • Core streaming engine and connectors
    • Premium features excluded and require a licence key
  • Cloud Basic$0.227/hour
    • Billed per RisingWave Unit hour
    • Hosted on AWS, GCP or Azure
    • Capped at 64 cores
  • Cloud Pro$undefined/year
    • No core limit
    • Bring your own cloud option
    • Premium features included
  • Self-managed Enterprise$undefined/year
    • On premises or Kubernetes
    • Premium features unlocked by licence
    • Annual contract with 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 RisingWave if

  • You need sql materialised views.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
  • You also want postgres wire compatibility.
RisingWave review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or RisingWave better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and RisingWave at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or RisingWave?
Amazon Redshift starts at Free and RisingWave at Free.
Does Amazon Redshift or RisingWave run on more platforms?
Amazon Redshift runs on Web. RisingWave runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
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 RisingWave is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that RisingWave cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. RisingWave covers SQL materialised views, Postgres wire compatibility, Object storage state, Source connectors.

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
RisingWave: Is RisingWave open source?

The community edition is Apache 2.0 and self-hostable, but a set of premium features requires a paid licence key.

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
RisingWave: What does the cloud cost?

It starts at 0.227 US dollars per RisingWave Unit hour on the Basic tier, which is capped at 64 cores.

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
RisingWave: Does it replace Flink?

For SQL-expressible transformations, often yes. For custom stateful processing and complex event handling, no.

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
RisingWave: Can I query it like Postgres?

Yes over the Postgres wire protocol, but it is an analytical streaming engine, not a transactional database.

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