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Amazon Redshift vs ClickHouse Cloud

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Amazon Redshift and ClickHouse Cloud built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Updated 7 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Amazon Redshift if…

Constant, predictable query load already inside AWS. At $0.543 an hour a provisioned cluster costs the same whether it serves one query or a million, so heavy continuous use is where the hourly model pays.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose ClickHouse Cloud if…

Knowing what a part-time warehouse costs. The published example is explicit — $66.52 a month for a Basic service awake six hours a day against $186.27 awake around the clock — with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Amazon Redshift: The warehouse sits idle. A provisioned cluster bills around $391 a month doing nothing; serverless shuts down when inactive but starts at $1.50 an hour, so the cheaper rate and the cheaper bill are not the same option.
  • ClickHouse Cloud: Data transfer matters. It is the only one here that puts public internet egress and cross-region transfer on the invoice as their own lines, so moving results out has a price the others absorb.

3 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Amazon Redshift documentationVisit ClickHouse Cloud documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAmazon RedshiftClickHouse Cloud
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
What the free plan includesA two-month free trial for provisioned clusters, capped at 750 hours a month — so one cluster running continuously exhausts it almost exactly. Serverless is offered with a credit instead, drawn down at a rate that depends on the endpoint capacity.Trial credits over a 30-day window, drawn down until they are depleted or the window closes, whichever comes first. Adding a card during the trial does not end it — the credits keep being consumed first. A time-boxed credit rather than a standing allowance, which is the opposite of BigQuery's tebibyte renewing every month.
Entry paid plan$0.543 an hour for a provisioned cluster, or $1.50 an hour for serverless — about $391 and $1,080 a month if left running. Serverless shuts down when idle and bills per second with a 60-second minimum, so the higher hourly rate can be the cheaper one.From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity.
Pricing modelTwo deployment options priced on time rather than data. Provisioned bills per node-hour for a cluster you size yourself; Serverless bills Redshift Processing Unit hours per second, with a 60-second minimum and no charge for start-up time, shutting down when inactive. Managed storage is billed independently of compute in both.Compute, storage and data transfer itemised separately, with compute varying by how many hours a day the service is active — $39.91, $79.83 or $159.66 in the published example for 6, 12 or 24 hours, against a flat $25.30 of storage. Scale, the always-on auto-scaling tier, starts at $499.38 a month.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

What the free plan includes

Amazon Redshift
A two-month free trial for provisioned clusters, capped at 750 hours a month — so one cluster running continuously exhausts it almost exactly. Serverless is offered with a credit instead, drawn down at a rate that depends on the endpoint capacity.
ClickHouse Cloud
Trial credits over a 30-day window, drawn down until they are depleted or the window closes, whichever comes first. Adding a card during the trial does not end it — the credits keep being consumed first. A time-boxed credit rather than a standing allowance, which is the opposite of BigQuery's tebibyte renewing every month.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon Redshift pricing ↗

    “Once your two month free trial expires or your usage exceeds 750 hours per month”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing

  • ClickHouse Cloud billing ↗

    “we continue drawing down trial credits until they are depleted or expire, whichever comes first”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official docs

Entry paid plan

Amazon Redshift
$0.543 an hour for a provisioned cluster, or $1.50 an hour for serverless — about $391 and $1,080 a month if left running. Serverless shuts down when idle and bills per second with a 60-second minimum, so the higher hourly rate can be the cheaper one.
ClickHouse Cloud
From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Amazon Redshift
Two deployment options priced on time rather than data. Provisioned bills per node-hour for a cluster you size yourself; Serverless bills Redshift Processing Unit hours per second, with a 60-second minimum and no charge for start-up time, shutting down when inactive. Managed storage is billed independently of compute in both.
ClickHouse Cloud
Compute, storage and data transfer itemised separately, with compute varying by how many hours a day the service is active — $39.91, $79.83 or $159.66 in the published example for 6, 12 or 24 hours, against a flat $25.30 of storage. Scale, the always-on auto-scaling tier, starts at $499.38 a month.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon Redshift pricing ↗

    “You pay for the workloads you run in RPU-hours on a per-second basis (with a 60-second minimum charge)”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official pricing

  • ClickHouse Cloud billing ↗

    “Compute $39.91 $79.83 $159.66 Storage $25.30 $25.30 $25.30”

    Read 2026-09-15 · official docs

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.

Kind of free offerClickHouse Cloud: Free trial
Egress over allowanceClickHouse Cloud: Itemised rather than absorbed: the published example carries $1.15 of public internet egress on 10 GB and $0.16 of cross-region transfer on 5 GB. The only member of this category that puts data transfer on the invoice as its own line.
Storage priceAmazon Redshift: Redshift Managed Storage grows independently of compute, so a cluster can be sized for query performance without over-provisioning disk. The page states the separation as the design point rather than quoting one rate for it.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Amazon Redshift or ClickHouse Cloud?

Amazon Redshift: $0.543 an hour for a provisioned cluster, or $1.50 an hour for serverless — about $391 and $1,080 a month if left running. Serverless shuts down when idle and bills per second with a 60-second minimum, so the higher hourly rate can be the cheaper one.

ClickHouse Cloud: From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity.

Should I choose Amazon Redshift or ClickHouse Cloud?

Pick Amazon Redshift if Constant, predictable query load already inside AWS. At $0.543 an hour a provisioned cluster costs the same whether it serves one query or a million, so heavy continuous use is where the hourly model pays.

Pick ClickHouse Cloud if Knowing what a part-time warehouse costs. The published example is explicit — $66.52 a month for a Basic service awake six hours a day against $186.27 awake around the clock — with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.

Provider pages

Amazon RedshiftA warehouse billed by the hour for provisioned nodes or by the second for serverless capacity, with storage scaling independently.ClickHouse CloudManaged ClickHouse billed on how many hours a service is active, with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.

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Every page here is sourced and dated.