# Amazon Redshift vs MotherDuck

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/aws-redshift-vs-motherduck/

Every value below is read from Amazon Redshift's and MotherDuck's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon Redshift | MotherDuck |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| What the free plan includes | 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. | Up to 3 internal active users and 2 service accounts, 10 GB of storage and 10 hours of Pulse compute a month, with community support and preset role-based access control. A standing plan rather than a trial. |
| 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. | $250 per organisation per month, plus usage. Priced on the organisation rather than on data or time — the only member here where adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not change the floor. |
| Pricing model | 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. | Per organisation per month plus usage, with seats rather than scans as the limiting dimension: up to 10 internal active users on Business against 3 on Lite, and unlimited service accounts. Five instance types and read-scaling replicas sit above that. |

## 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/pricing/))
- MotherDuck: Up to 3 internal active users and 2 service accounts, 10 GB of storage and 10 hours of Pulse compute a month, with community support and preset role-based access control. A standing plan rather than a trial. ([source](https://motherduck.com/product/pricing/))

### 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/pricing/))
- MotherDuck: $250 per organisation per month, plus usage. Priced on the organisation rather than on data or time — the only member here where adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not change the floor. ([source](https://motherduck.com/product/pricing/))

### 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/pricing/))
- MotherDuck: Per organisation per month plus usage, with seats rather than scans as the limiting dimension: up to 10 internal active users on Business against 3 on Lite, and unlimited service accounts. Five instance types and read-scaling replicas sit above that. ([source](https://motherduck.com/product/pricing/))

## Which should you choose?

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 MotherDuck if Analytics that fit on one machine, priced per organisation rather than per query: $250 a month flat plus usage, so adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not move the floor. A 99.9% SLA comes with it.

Consider something else: 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.

Consider something else: MotherDuck — You have more than ten people or need an SLA cheaply. Business caps internal active users at ten, and both the SLA and custom roles arrive only at $250 — the free Lite plan allows three users and publishes no availability commitment.

## Documented by only one

- Uptime SLA: MotherDuck: 99.9% availability on the Business plan. Nothing is published for Lite, so the SLA arrives with the $250 fee rather than with the product.
- Storage price: Amazon 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.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Amazon Redshift or MotherDuck?**

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.
MotherDuck: $250 per organisation per month, plus usage. Priced on the organisation rather than on data or time — the only member here where adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not change the floor.

**Should I choose Amazon Redshift or MotherDuck?**

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 MotherDuck if Analytics that fit on one machine, priced per organisation rather than per query: $250 a month flat plus usage, so adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not move the floor. A 99.9% SLA comes with it.