Softwr

Databases · head to head

Amazon Redshift vs Teradata

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Databases

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Teradata logo

Teradata

Databases

Long-established enterprise MPP data warehouse, rebranded in 2026 as the Autonomous Knowledge Platform, sold for cloud, on-premises and hybrid.

From
On request
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; Teradata licensing is negotiated rather than published, so there is no way to compare total cost against a consumption-priced warehouse without entering a sales cycle, and the comparison is only ever as good as the workload profile you gave them.
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Teradata covers Massively parallel architecture.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Teradata differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftTeradata
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelusage-basedquote
Free tierYesNo
Founded2012Unknown

Identical on both: platforms (Web), 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 Teradata

  • Massively parallel architecture
  • Workload management
  • Mature cost-based optimiser
  • Cloud, on-premises and hybrid
  • Bulk load utilities
  • BTEQ scripting
  • In-database analytics
  • Enterprise Vector Store

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Teradata

  • A large existing Teradata estate where the practical question is which workloads to migrate first rather than whether to adoptnot Amazon Redshift
  • High-concurrency mixed workloads where hundreds of analysts and scheduled jobs contend and predictable prioritisation matters more than peak single-query speednot Amazon Redshift
  • Regulated reporting where the same query must produce the same answer for years and the audit trail of the existing implementation has valuenot Amazon Redshift
  • Hybrid deployments where regulatory or data-residency rules keep a portion of the warehouse on-premises while the rest moves to cloudnot 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

Teradata

  • Licensing is negotiated rather than published, so there is no way to compare total cost against a consumption-priced warehouse without entering a sales cycle, and the comparison is only ever as good as the workload profile you gave them.
  • The SQL dialect and the loading utilities are Teradata-specific, so every stored procedure, macro and BTEQ script written against the platform is migration debt that grows with each release you ship.
  • Primary index choice determines data distribution, and a poorly chosen index concentrates rows on a few processing units, which surfaces as one slow query rather than an error and needs a specialist to diagnose.
  • The skills market is contracting, so DBA and workload-management expertise is expensive to hire, hard to replace when someone retires, and increasingly hard to buy from consultancies whose own bench has moved to cloud warehouses.
  • The 2026 renaming of Vantage, VantageCloud, ClearScape and QueryGrid split documentation, runbooks and vendor material across two naming systems, so searching for an error or a configuration now returns results for a product that is described under a different name.

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

Teradata

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Teradata review.

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 Teradata if

  • You need massively parallel architecture.
  • You also want workload management.
Teradata review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Teradata better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Teradata at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Teradata?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Redshift and On request for Teradata.
Does Amazon Redshift or Teradata 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. Teradata starts at On request.
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 Teradata is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Teradata cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Teradata covers Massively parallel architecture, Workload management, Mature cost-based optimiser, Cloud, on-premises and hybrid.

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
Teradata: Is Teradata only on-premises?

No. It is sold for cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment, and the cloud offering is now branded Teradata Cloud. A large part of the installed base is still on-premises or hybrid.

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
Teradata: How does it compare to Snowflake or BigQuery?

On raw elasticity and cost transparency the cloud warehouses win. On mixed-workload concurrency management against a large existing query estate Teradata is still hard to replace, which is why migrations off it take years rather than quarters.

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
Teradata: Why do organisations stay on it?

Because the cost of leaving is the estate, not the data. Thousands of procedures, scripts and extracts written in a proprietary dialect have to be rewritten and revalidated, and in regulated reporting that revalidation is the expensive part.

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
Teradata: What changed in the 2026 rebrand?

Vantage became the Autonomous Knowledge Platform, VantageCloud became Teradata Cloud, ClearScape Analytics became AI Studio and QueryGrid became Fabric. The underlying products are continuous with what came before.

Teradata: Can it handle AI and vector workloads?

It has added an Enterprise Vector Store and in-database analytics branded AI Studio. Whether that is preferable to moving the data into a purpose-built vector store depends on how much of your data already lives in the warehouse.

Share

Related pages

More on Amazon Redshift

More on Teradata

Keep looking

Other head to heads