Amazon Redshift vs Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute

Amazon Redshift9.2Visit Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute8.6Visit

Higher score Amazon Redshift #2 in Data Warehouse Software 9.2/10 Paid ✓ 4 of 4 features Try Amazon Redshift

vs

Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute #6 in Data Warehouse Software 8.6/10 Paid ✓ 4 of 4 features Visit Alibaba Cloud

• Amazon Redshift fits best

  AWS-centric analytics teams

• Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute fits best

  Serverless lakehouse and batch analytics

Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. Vendors can pay for top positions in our rankings and for a place on other products' pages, and we may earn a commission when you click some links. Bought places stand at the number bought; this page and our disclosure say so. Paying vendors may get a fuller, more detailed review from our editors, and that review can change their score. How we rank.

Side by side

Feature	Amazon Redshift 9.2/10 Visit ↗	Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute 8.6/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.2	8.6
Ranking	#2 in Data Warehouse Software	#6 in Data Warehouse Software
Best for	AWS-centric analytics teams	Serverless lakehouse and batch analytics
Pricing model	Paid	Paid
Starting price	$0.54/unit usage-based	$22/unit/mo
Free plan	—	Not checked yet
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web	Web
Support	Email, Live chat, Phone, Tickets, Docs	Live chat, Tickets, Docs
Integrations	15 integrations	14 integrations
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Amazon Redshift 4/4 · Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute 4/4
Separate storage and compute	✓	✓
Data lake support	✓	✓
Streaming ingestion	✓	✓
In-database machine learning	✓	✓
Specs
Deployment model	Cloud	Cloud
Pricing model	Hybrid	Hybrid
Our review
Pros	Provisioned and serverless deployment options Queries Amazon S3 data lakes and supports streaming ingestion Native SQL-based machine learning with Redshift ML	Separates storage and compute for independent scaling Supports SQL, Spark, MapReduce, Graph, and MaxFrame Queries OSS and Hadoop data without migration
Cons	No free plan Serverless is priced at $1.50 per hour Managed storage is billed separately for some provisioned nodes	Storage and downloads are billed separately Lakehouse solution is listed as public preview Resource-based pricing requires compute usage management
Our verdict	Amazon Redshift is a fully managed cloud data warehouse for analyzing large datasets with SQL. It supports data teams, analysts, developers, and organizations running business intelligence, data lake, real-time analytics, and predictive… Read the review →	Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute is a fully managed, serverless cloud data warehouse for enterprise-scale warehousing, analytics, business intelligence, near-real-time processing, data lake analysis, and machine learning. It is aimed at teams that… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Amazon Redshift — where it wins

  • Provisioned and serverless deployment options
  • Queries Amazon S3 data lakes and supports streaming ingestion
  • Native SQL-based machine learning with Redshift ML

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan
  • Serverless is priced at $1.50 per hour
  • Managed storage is billed separately for some provisioned nodes

• Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute — where it wins

  • Separates storage and compute for independent scaling
  • Supports SQL, Spark, MapReduce, Graph, and MaxFrame
  • Queries OSS and Hadoop data without migration

  Where it doesn't

  • Storage and downloads are billed separately
  • Lakehouse solution is listed as public preview
  • Resource-based pricing requires compute usage management

• Amazon Redshift9.2/10 · Paid

  A broad AWS-native warehouse with flexible deployments, but no free plan.

  Try Amazon RedshiftFull verdict →
• Alibaba Cloud MaxCompute8.6/10 · Paid

  A serverless warehouse for flexible compute, lake queries, and multiple processing engines.

  Visit Alibaba CloudFull verdict →