RDS is a managed service for Online Transaction Processing databases (OLTP), i.e. a managed service for the usual MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server or Aurora (Amazon's own relational database)

Redshift is a managed service for data warehousing, i.e. columnar oriented storage, typical for business analytics type of workloads.

Answer from Sébastien Stormacq on Stack Overflow
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/aws › deciding between rds and redshift for "data warehouse"
r/aws on Reddit: Deciding between RDS and Redshift for "data warehouse"
January 27, 2023 -

Hi all,

I have a business request to ETL data from several sources into a data warehouse to run BI tools on (Tableau or PowerBI for example).

The dataset isn't that big, 400GB growing 4GB per week. I can't find any good explanation on if I should use RDS or Redshift to store the data.

Can anyone with experience on this topic guide me please?

Thank you!

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TechTarget
techtarget.com › searchcloudcomputing › tip › When-to-use-Amazon-RDS-vs-Redshift
When to use Amazon RDS vs. Redshift | TechTarget
Essentially, Amazon RDS and Redshift equip application owners with a programmatic way to store and access data and make it available to end users. While these two AWS database services share similarities, they were built to solve different problems.
Discussions

amazon web services - Difference between RDS and Redshift - Stack Overflow
If you use Select * from more often, go for RDS. (OLTP) If you use features like SUM(A) more often, go for RedShift. (OLAP) ... Save this answer. ... Show activity on this post. Brief Introduction of AWS RDS & Redshift, AWS RDS: Amazon RDS is a managed relational database service that ... More on stackoverflow.com
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Deciding between RDS and Redshift for "data warehouse"
You can go for Aurora first then migrate to redshift when your data gets around 5Tb or so, that’s my estimate in which the query starts to get slow in a rds and dwh will be much faster More on reddit.com
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January 27, 2023
DynamoDB or Aurora or RDS?
Try this search for more information on this topic. Comments, questions or suggestions regarding this autoresponse? Please send them here . I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns. More on reddit.com
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December 2, 2024
ELI5: When should you use RDS over DynamoDB?
Strong consistency, ability to arbitrarily sort your result data, ability to add arbitrary indices easily, simple paging of results... I'm sure there are many others. There are benefits to SQL and there are benefits to NOSQL. They overlap some, but not for all use cases for all people. More on reddit.com
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March 2, 2020
People also ask

Is Redshift a relational database?
Yes, Redshift is a relational database, as it uses SQL and supports structured data. However, it is specialized for analytical purposes rather than traditional transactional tasks.
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hevodata.com
hevodata.com › home › blog › data warehousing
Amazon Redshift Vs RDS Comparison: 9 Critical Factors
What is the difference between Redshift and RD?
Redshift is optimized for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), ideal for data warehousing and running complex queries on large datasets.
Relational databases (like those in RDS) are optimized for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), suited for applications requiring frequent read/write operations.
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hevodata.com
hevodata.com › home › blog › data warehousing
Amazon Redshift Vs RDS Comparison: 9 Critical Factors
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Medium
aarfahrayees.medium.com › when-to-use-rds-vs-redshift-on-aws-e4669995d1ee
When to use RDS vs. Redshift on AWS | by Aarfah Ahmad | Medium
February 17, 2024 - This makes RDS easy to use and manage, but also means that users have limited control over the underlying database engine and configuration. Redshift, on the other hand, is a partially managed service, which means that users are responsible for some maintenance and management tasks. This gives users more control over their data warehousing environment, but also requires a higher level of expertise and effort to manage. ... In the AWS ecosystem, both Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift play critical roles in addressing different database requirements.
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AWS
aws.amazon.com › what is cloud computing? › databases › amazon rds and amazon redshift
Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift - Compare AWS Transactional and Analytics Databases - AWS
1 week ago - Compare Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift side by side. RDS is a managed relational database for transactional workloads (OLTP); Redshift is a cloud data warehouse for analytics and business intelligence (OLAP).
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Integrate.io
integrate.io › home › blog › big data › what is the difference between aws redshift and rds?
What Is the Difference Between AWS Redshift and RDS? | Integrate.io
July 21, 2025 - AWS Redshift is available on both AWS GovCloud (US) and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. This means that it can be used by government agencies or companies who need to keep data within specific geographical boundaries for compliance reasons. However, it's important to note that this does not mean your databases are automatically compliant with GDPR requirements. RDS is a database service offered by AWS that allows users to quickly set up, manage and scale relational databases in the cloud.
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WhatsUp Gold
whatsupgold.com › blog › amazon-redshift-vs.-rds-which-is-right-for-you
Amazon Redshift VS. RDS: Which is Right For You? - WhatsUp Gold
November 20, 2024 - If you’re looking for a cloud equivalent of your on-premises database, RDS is a good option for you. If RDS is your on-premises database, Redshift is your enterprise data warehouse.
Find elsewhere
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Satori
satoricyber.com › home › amazon redshift vs. amazon rds
Amazon Redshift Vs. Amazon RDS - Satori Cyber
April 22, 2023 - The most significant differences between Redshift and RDS are storage capacity and scalability limits. The storage may get increased up to petabytes of data with Redshift. With its large type instance, AWS Redshift has a limit of 2 PB.
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Hevo Data
hevodata.com › home › blog › data warehousing
Amazon Redshift Vs RDS Comparison: 9 Critical Factors
January 27, 2026 - Storage scaling will depend on ... database engine. Redshift is a completely managed data warehouse as a service and can scale up to petabytes of data while offering lightning-fast querying performance....
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CloudThat
cloudthat.com › home › blogs › comparison between amazon rds and amazon redshift
Comparison between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift
June 25, 2024 - While Amazon RDS excels in managing transactional workloads, ensuring data consistency, and supporting applications like E-Commerce platforms and content management systems, Amazon Redshift is optimized for processing complex analytical queries on large datasets. Leveraging the strengths of both services through integration, facilitated by AWS Glue and other migration tools, can provide a comprehensive and efficient data management solution.
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CloudWebSchool
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Redshift vs RDS in AWS | CloudWebSchool
March 19, 2026 - BI tools query Redshift — dashboards, reports, and ad-hoc analytical queries hit Redshift, never the production RDS database. This decoupling means analytics queries never touch the production database. A heavy dashboard query that scans 100 million rows in Redshift has zero impact on the application serving users. Aurora zero-ETL integration with Redshift (an emerging AWS feature) removes the pipeline step — changes in Aurora are replicated to Redshift automatically without a separate ETL job.
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DEV Community
dev.to › tomerbendavid › comparing-postgre-rds-vs-redshift-pricing-estimation-23o4
Comparing Postgre RDS vs Redshift Pricing Estimation - DEV Community
February 26, 2025 - In conclusion, while RDS with ... for transactional workloads, Redshift offers better value for large-scale data analytics due to its lower storage costs and optimized architecture....
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CloudThat
cloudthat.com › home › blogs › choosing between amazon rds and amazon redshift
Choosing Between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift
June 25, 2024 - Many applications use Amazon RDS for transactional data storage and Amazon Redshift for analytics, leveraging the strengths of each service in tandem. ... Aritra Das works as a Research Associate at CloudThat. He is highly skilled in the backend and has good practical knowledge of various skills like Python, Java, Azure Services, and AWS Services.
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DataSunrise
datasunrise.com › home › redshift and rds
Redshift and RDS: Key Differences and Use Cases
March 6, 2025 - To demonstrate the usage of Redshift and RDS, let’s consider a simple example. Suppose we have an e-commerce application that stores customer and order data. We want to analyze the total spent by each customer in the last year. Before running the queries mentioned earlier, we need to set up the necessary databases, tables, and users. ... Create a Redshift cluster and database using the AWS Management Console or CLI.
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Beekeeper Studio
beekeeperstudio.io › blog › amazon-rds-vs-redshift
Comparing Amazon RDS and Redshift: Key Differences and Use Cases | Beekeeper Studio
December 18, 2022 - Amazon RDS and Redshift are both ... use cases. RDS is a fully-managed relational database service, while Redshift is a partially-managed data warehousing service optimized for fast querying of large datasets....
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Boltic
boltic.io › home › blog › aws redshift vs rds
AWS Redshift vs RDS - Key Features, Comparison & Use Cases
January 14, 2026 - AWS Redshift uses a cluster-based architecture with multiple nodes to maintain an optimal mix of scalability and performance. ... Among the nodes, one of the nodes is designated as a leader node, and this node is responsible for client communication, query optimization, execution plan creation, and sending tasks to individual nodes for execution. ... Like RDS, Redshift pricing is also including storage and compute resources, and customers can choose to pay only for what they use.
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Eternal Web Pvt Ltd
eternalsoftsolutions.com › home › amazon redshift vs amazon rds
Amazon Redshift vs Amazon RDS: Key Differences & When to Use Each
April 11, 2026 - Developers often choose Amazon Redshift because it is scalable and supports encryption, isolation and fast columnar storage. It is cheap and reliable and is considered to give the best cloud DW performance.
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EDUCBA
educba.com › home › data science › data science tutorials › head to head differences tutorial › amazon rds vs redshift
Amazon rds vs Redshift | Key Differences of Amazon rds vs Redshift
March 8, 2023 - Amazon rds is a relational database service which is provided by Amazon web services, it supports to store and organize data of the database engine and helps to manage tasks of the database, it operates and scales the relational database in the cloud, it brings up the database in an easy way without worrying about the infrastructure, whereas the Amazon Redshift is a cloud-based service or a data warehouse service that is used for collecting and storing data, also it enables a user to analyze the data using Business Intelligence tools and simplifies the process of handling large scale data sets.
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Just After Midnight
justaftermidnight247.com › insights › rds-redshift-dynamodb-and-aurora-how-do-aws-managed-databases-compare
RDS, Redshift, DynamoDB and Aurora - how do AWS’ managed databases compare? | Just After Midnight
January 23, 2026 - RDS – Because RDS is less complex, it’s easier to scale – requiring just a few clicks on the AWS Console to determine an auto-scale max capacity. It can be run using a reserved capacity or on-demand. Redshift – Redshift’s infrastructure is more complicated, meaning there’ll be more downtime and complexity involved in scaling.
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Ramji Guides
amruthadronamraju.hashnode.dev › rds-vs-redshift
RDS Vs Redshift - Ramji Guides - Hashnode
October 29, 2023 - Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift are both managed data storage services provided by AWS, but they have different use cases. RDS is designed for transactional workloads, making it suitable for applications like online retail and financial services.