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StackShare
stackshare.io › stackups › amazon-redshift-vs-mysql
Amazon Redshift vs MySQL | What are the differences? | StackShare
Amazon Redshift - It is optimized for data sets ranging from a few hundred gigabytes to a petabyte or more and costs less than $1,000 per terabyte per year, a tenth the cost of most traditional data warehousing solutions. MySQL - The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server.
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Airbyte
airbyte.com › data integration platform › data engineering resources › amazon redshift vs mysql- a comparative analysis
Amazon Redshift vs MySQL- A Comparative Analysis | Airbyte
August 29, 2025 - Amazon Redshift is a cloud-based, ... integration. MySQL is an open-source, row-oriented relational database ideal for transactional processing with ACID compliance and extensive ecosystem support....
Discussions

SQL databases closest or most adaptable to Amazon Redshift?
Postgresql is very close to redshift in terms of sql syntax. Just don't fall for the assumption that redshift is postgresql on steroids. No. Redshift is a very different beast, even if it supports postgres-like sql. Edit: obligatory link to redshift fundamentals: https://redshift-observatory.ch/white_papers/downloads/introduction_to_the_fundamentals_of_amazon_redshift.pdf More on reddit.com
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September 4, 2025
postgresql - Bad practice to use MySQL and RedShift together? - Stack Overflow
A current project I am working on has been exclusively using MySQL as our RDMS. We are currently looking to segment the database into two different databases. One will be moving to RedShift (which ... More on stackoverflow.com
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amazon web services - Is AWS Redshift to PostgreSQL the same as AWS Aurora to MySQL? - Stack Overflow
I struggle to understand if it would be a good idea to switch from PostgreSQL to Redshift with the same light heartedness one would shift from MySQL to Aurora. Similarly to what AWS advertises about More on stackoverflow.com
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Redhsift Vs RDS MySQL benchmarking
I want to know why the redshift is taking too much time for retreiving the results through the API call and mysql is faster with api call ... Are these answers helpful? Upvote the correct answer to help the community benefit from your knowledge. ... Can you provide the SQL being executed? More on repost.aws
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June 10, 2024
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Quora
quora.com › What-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-Amazon-Redshift-compared-to-SQL-Server-MySQL-and-PostgreSQL
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Amazon Redshift compared to SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL? - Quora
MySQL is fairly easy to use and it’s often the first SQL DBMS that developers are exposed to, which makes it an easy — or lazy — choice, but that’s rarely a good excuse for using it when better choices — like PostgreSQL — are available. ... RelatedWhat are the advantages and disadvantages of Google BigQuery, AWS Redshift, and Snowflake Data Warehouse?
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Hevo
hevodata.com › home › learn › data warehousing
Amazon Redshift vs MySQL: Key Differences
May 29, 2025 - Amazon Redshift is a large-scale ... analysis using Business Intelligence tools. MySQL on the other hand is an open-source Relational Database Management System developed by Oracle....
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Oracle
oracle.com › ai database › heatwave
MySQL HeatWave vs Amazon Redshift | Oracle
Better performance and price performance: Oracle HeatWave MySQL is 4X faster than Amazon Redshift, delivering 10X better price-performance. The query performance of HeatWave Lakehouse is 15X faster than Amazon Redshift, delivering 11X better ...
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TrustRadius
trustradius.com › compare-products › mysql-vs-redshift
MySQL vs Amazon Redshift | TrustRadius
Compare MySQL vs Amazon Redshift. 1188 verified user reviews and ratings of features, pros, cons, pricing, support and more.
Find elsewhere
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StackShare
stackshare.io › stackups › amazon-redshift-vs-microsoft-sql-server
Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft SQL Server | What are the differences?
"Data Warehousing", "Scalable" and "SQL" are the key factors why developers consider Amazon Redshift; whereas "Reliable and easy to use", "High performance" and "Great with .net" are the primary reasons why Microsoft SQL Server is favored.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/dataengineering › sql databases closest or most adaptable to amazon redshift?
r/dataengineering on Reddit: SQL databases closest or most adaptable to Amazon Redshift?
September 4, 2025 -

So the startup I am potentially looking at is a small outfit and much of their data is mostly coming from Java/MyBatis microservices. They are already hosted on Amazon (I believe).

However from what I know, the existing user base and/or data size is very small (20k users; likely to have duplicates).

The POC here is an analytics project to mine data from said users via surveys or LLM chats (there is some monetization involved on user side).

Said data will then be used for

  • Advertising profiles/segmentation

Since the current data volume is so small, and reading several threads here, it seems the consensus is to use RDS for small outfits like this. However obviously they will want to expand to down the road and given their ecosystem I believe Redshift is eventually the best option.

That loops back to the question in the title, namely what setups in your experience are most adaptable to RDS?

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LogicMonitor
logicmonitor.com › home › what is amazon redshift?
What Is Amazon Redshift? | LogicMonitor
November 19, 2025 - While MySQL is great for online transaction processing (OLTP), Redshift is optimized for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP). This means that it’s better suited for analyzing large amounts of data.
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Fivetran
fivetran.com › learn › mysql-to-redshift
MySQL to Redshift: A Guide to Data Loading & Replication
December 19, 2025 - Learn how to load data from MySQL to Redshift. We compare custom ETL scripts vs. automated tools for MySQL and Redshift replication and data loading.
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Redshift is not PostgreSQL. It is a column store engine that uses a very heavily modified part of a very old PostgreSQL version as its front-end. Under the hood it's powered by ParAccel, a very heavily modified fork of PostgreSQL 8.0.2.

Imagine someone took MySQL 4.1 or something from that era, deleted InnoDB and MyISAM, added their own hardwired storage engine, removed a whole bunch of features and added a bunch of different ones - changing the supported SQL dialect in the process. That gives you some idea.

It's a dramatically different product for different needs. It's heavily optimised for OLAP workloads and pays a heavy price for OLTP workloads.

In general you should use PostgreSQL (on AWS RDS, or elsewhere) for your day to day transaction processing. If you want data warehousing and analytics and have outgrown PostgreSQL for that then you might consider Redshift as one of your options... though it's likely you haven't really outgrown PostgreSQL, just AWS RDS.

Maybe you're looking for something more like Postgres-XL ?

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The other answer is accurate regarding Redshift not being the PostgreSQL equivalent of Aurora. Generally you'd use Redshift when you needed to run some very heavy queries on a large dataset (the stuff that might take hours or more to finish running). Redshift is a columnar datastore that essentially auto-normalizes every piece of data that comes in and can execute queries that would otherwise take days in seconds. When you're done, you delete it and then repeat the process when you need it again.

In terms of getting an Aurora equivalent for PostgreSQL, I don't know how far off that is but I'm pretty sure an enterprising person could build their own with AWS EFS (https://aws.amazon.com/efs/). I'm fairly certain that's a big part of the Aurora formula.

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Portable
portable.io › learn › redshift-vs-mysql-comparison
Redshift vs. MySQL Comparison: 2025 Deep-Dive
Redshift. Redshift is a fully managed cloud-based data warehouse. It is part of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and offers essentially unlimited scaling for big data at an affordable price. MySQL.
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AWS re:Post
repost.aws › questions › QU__2ak9ygSSm7Zlim5vZVmg › redhsift-vs-rds-mysql-benchmarking
Redhsift Vs RDS MySQL benchmarking | AWS re:Post
June 10, 2024 - I have an application which uses Java JDBC Spring as a backend framework, I've connected my application to RDS MySQL I've tested the results it is able to provide the results faster but when I tested the results with Redshift using amazon-redshift-jdbc driver which is taking more time to return the results.
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Quora
quora.com › Is-there-a-performance-difference-between-connecting-Tableau-desktop-to-AWS-Redshift-vs-MySQL
Is there a performance difference between connecting Tableau desktop to AWS Redshift vs. MySQL? - Quora
Redshift is designed for data warehousing and the queries run from Tableau on multiple TB's of data were extremely fast right out of the box. MySQL was far slower and I had to spend time adding indexes to just get...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/datascience › amazon redshift vs. microsoft sql server
r/datascience on Reddit: Amazon Redshift vs. Microsoft SQL Server
December 11, 2019 -

How different are the 2 database platforms? I have quite a bit of experience creating and maintaining custom tables and data feeds in Redshift using S3 and other automation tools. How different and difficult would learning how to administrate and run a MSS database be? Thank you!

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It depends what kind of workload the SQL Server is expected to do. As you’re aware (but mostly for others reading), Redshift is a large scale data warehouse built for OLAP style queries. Redshift is columnar in nature, allowing for much more efficient data access using OLAP style queries. Redshift does not support constraints (lets you define them, but doesn’t enforce them (except not null). Unique isn’t enforced, but used by the query planner to optimize your queries). Redshift is a distributed data warehouse, meaning your queries are meant to scan large amounts of data and take advantage of Redshifts ability to operate in parallel. My suggestion is that if you don’t have at least 1 TB of data, don’t bother with a solution like Redshift, as there are downsides to using this. Redshift suggests loading data via S3 (copy commands), and actively suggests against loading anything less than 100k rows at a time for performance concerns. A query you’d expect to be issued against a database like Redshift is: SELECT cust_name, SUM(sales) AS total_sales, AVG(sales) AS avg_sales FROM fact_sales GROUP BY 1 SQL Server is an OLTP style database, meaning it’s very good at the same things Postgres and MySQL are. It’s very good at storing and using third normal form modeled tables, and doing quick lookups based on indexes. SQL Server is incredibly strong at inserting, updating, and deleting data as it’s stored in row fashion on disk, and can enforce differing levels of isolation. A query you’d expect to see issued against a database like SQL Server is: SELECT * FROM customers WHERE customer_id = 5 Strictly from a management point of view, I’d worry mostly about what kind of application is using your database. Typically, if an OLAP system goes down, it’s an inconvenience. When an OLTP system goes down, your customers won’t be able to register for your website, buy things, or any other revenue generating activities because OLTP databases are typically needed for system of record style applications that directly engage with an end user of some sort. Source: am data engineer who built out a data warehouse on top of Redshift and has acted DBA on transactional systems built on Postgres (close enough to sql Server).
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They are quite different I think. Things like sharding, distribution, sorting are not a concern with SQL server. While indexing and partitioning are very important to SQL server but either don't apply or not as crucial to redshift. They may expose similar interface (SQL) to users, but are actually very different in terms of design, architecture and optimisation.
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Hevo
hevodata.com › home › learn
Learn about data integration, migration, replication, and strategic data practices.
May 13, 2024 - Redshift · Kafka · Versus · Database Management System · MySQL · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · SQL Server · Versus · Platform · Product · Tutorials · Data Replication · MySQL · PostgreSQL · SQL Server · AWS · HomeLearn · April 24th, 2026 By Amit Gupta, Shashank Rao in Uncategorized ·