Amazon Redshift vs Apache Pinot

Amazon Redshift9.3Visit Apache Pinot8.7Visit

Higher score Amazon Redshift #2 in OLAP Software 9.3/10 Paid ✓ 0 of 3 features Try Amazon Redshift

vs

Apache Pinot #8 in OLAP Software 8.7/10 Open source ✓ 3 of 3 features Visit Apache Pinot

• Amazon Redshift fits best

  AWS-centric data warehouse teams

• Apache Pinot fits best

  Embedded real-time analytics builders

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 9.3/10 Visit ↗	Apache Pinot 8.7/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.3	8.7
Ranking	#2 in OLAP Software	#8 in OLAP Software
Best for	AWS-centric data warehouse teams	Embedded real-time analytics builders
Pricing model	Paid	Free
Starting price	$0.54/unit usage-based	Open source
Free plan	—	Not checked yet
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Self-hosted
Support	Email, Live chat, Phone, Tickets, Docs	Community, Docs
Integrations	15 integrations	13 integrations
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Amazon Redshift 0/3 · Apache Pinot 3/3
Real-time ingestion	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Row-level security	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Embedded analytics	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Specs
Deployment	Not checked yet	Self_hosted
Query language	Not checked yet	Sql
Included users	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Data source coverage	Not checked yet	Streaming: Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis; batch: Hadoop, Spark, Amazon S3, Azure ADLS, Google Cloud Storage
Our review
Pros	Queries Amazon S3 data lakes with SQL Offers provisioned and serverless deployment options Includes streaming, zero-ETL, ML, and data sharing features	Streams data from Kafka, Pulsar, and Kinesis in real time Combines streaming and batch sources in one table Supports SQL, REST access, joins, upserts, and varied indexes
Cons	No free plan Provisioned storage is billed separately for RG and RA3 nodes Serverless starts at $1.50 per hour	Self-hosted deployment requires infrastructure ownership No managed cloud service is included Its focus is real-time OLAP rather than general-purpose analytics
Our verdict	Amazon Redshift is a fully managed cloud data warehouse for teams analyzing large datasets with SQL. It supports business intelligence, data lake analytics, real-time workloads, and predictive modeling across web and API access. Data… Read the review →	Apache Pinot is an open-source, distributed OLAP database for user-facing and agent-facing real-time analytics. It is designed for embedded analytics, customer dashboards, metrics APIs, and other high-concurrency analytical applications.… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Amazon Redshift — where it wins

  • Queries Amazon S3 data lakes with SQL
  • Offers provisioned and serverless deployment options
  • Includes streaming, zero-ETL, ML, and data sharing features

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan
  • Provisioned storage is billed separately for RG and RA3 nodes
  • Serverless starts at $1.50 per hour

• Apache Pinot — where it wins

  • Streams data from Kafka, Pulsar, and Kinesis in real time
  • Combines streaming and batch sources in one table
  • Supports SQL, REST access, joins, upserts, and varied indexes

  Where it doesn't

  • Self-hosted deployment requires infrastructure ownership
  • No managed cloud service is included
  • Its focus is real-time OLAP rather than general-purpose analytics

• Amazon Redshift9.3/10 · Paid

  A broad AWS-native warehouse for teams balancing SQL analytics, lakes, streaming, and ML.

  Try Amazon RedshiftFull verdict →
• Apache Pinot8.7/10 · Open source

  A self-hosted OLAP database for embedding low-latency analytics into products.

  Visit Apache PinotFull verdict →