Redshift vs Snowflake cost

Here’s the practical Redshift vs Snowflake cost comparison:

1) Pricing model

Amazon Redshift

• Usually cheaper for steady, predictable workloads.
• You pay for:
  • Provisioned clusters: hourly/node-based
  • or Redshift Serverless: pay per RPU-second
  • plus storage and some extra services depending on setup
• Cost can be very efficient if the cluster is kept busy.

Snowflake

• Pay separately for:
  • Compute: credits consumed by warehouses
  • Storage: per TB/month
  • Features like cloning, time travel, data sharing are included, but compute usage drives cost
• Cost is very flexible, but can rise quickly if warehouses run a lot or are left on.

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2) Typical cost outcome

Redshift is often cheaper when:

• Workload is always on
• You have predictable query patterns
• You can tune and manage the cluster well
• You want lower raw infrastructure cost

Snowflake is often cheaper when:

• Workload is spiky or intermittent
• You need easy elasticity
• You want to avoid admin/tuning overhead
• Multiple teams use the platform and need isolation

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3) Hidden/indirect cost differences

Redshift hidden costs

• More DBA/engineering effort for:
  • tuning
  • vacuum/analyze
  • distribution/sort keys
  • scaling decisions
• Can cost more in staff time

Snowflake hidden costs

• Costs can creep from:
  • warehouses left running
  • many concurrent workloads
  • inefficient queries
  • excessive data movement
• Easier to use, but easier to overspend if unmanaged

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4) Rule of thumb

• Cheapest for stable BI/warehouse usage: often Redshift
• Cheapest for variable, self-service analytics: often Snowflake
• Best overall cost control depends on governance and workload shape

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5) How to compare accurately

To compare for your case, estimate:

• Data stored (TB)
• Daily query volume
• Peak concurrency
• Hours per day compute runs
• ETL/ELT load
• Required elasticity
• Team/admin overhead

A rough real-world comparison usually needs:

• Redshift: node count / serverless RPU usage
• Snowflake: warehouse size + hours + concurrency + storage

If you want, I can build a side-by-side cost model for your workload if you give me:

• data size
• monthly query hours
• concurrency
• ETL frequency
• whether the workload is 24/7 or bursty