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Database & Data Management · head to head

Amazon Redshift vs Together AI

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Database & Data Management

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Together AI logo

Together AI

AI Tools

Open-source AI at scale

From
Free
Rated
-

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Amazon Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery; Together AI fine tuning carries a minimum charge of $4.00 per job regardless of dataset size
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Together AI covers Open-source models.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Amazon Redshift and Together AI actually diverge.

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and Together AI differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftTogether AI
PlatformsWebApi, Cloud
CategoryDatabase & Data ManagementAI Tools
Founded20122022

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (usage-based), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

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 Together AI

  • Open-source models
  • Fine-tuning
  • Fast inference
  • Embeddings
  • REST API
  • Python SDK
  • OpenAI compatible
  • Api support

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

Together AI

  • Serverless inference against open source chat, vision, embedding, image and video modelsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Renting dedicated single tenant H100, H200 or B200 GPU clusters by the hournot Amazon Redshift
  • Fine tuning open weight models on a per token basisnot 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

Together AI

  • Fine tuning carries a minimum charge of $4.00 per job regardless of dataset size
  • Reserved GPU commitments beyond 180 days are priced by contacting sales with no published rate
  • Volume and enterprise discounts are quote only with no published threshold
  • Reserved dedicated inference pricing is contact sales while only on demand rates of $5.49 to $8.99 per GPU hour are published

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

Together AI

Free
  • FreeFree
    • $5 credits
    • API access
  • Pay-per-use$0.2/per-million-tokens
    • All models
    • Fine-tuning

Which should you pick?

Choose Amazon Redshift if

  • You need columnar storage.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want massively parallel.

Choose Together AI if

  • You need open-source models.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Api, Cloud.
  • You also want fine-tuning.

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or Together AI better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Together AI at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or Together AI?
Amazon Redshift starts at Free and Together AI at Free.
Does Amazon Redshift or Together AI run on more platforms?
Amazon Redshift runs on Web. Together AI runs on Api, 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 Together AI is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that Together AI cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Together AI covers Open-source models, Fine-tuning, Fast inference, Embeddings.

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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