Athena vs Redshift Spectrum

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Mukund picture Mukund · May 9, 2018 · Viewed 13.3k times · Source

I am kind of evaluating Athena & Redshift Spectrum. Both serve the same purpose, Spectrum needs a Redshift cluster in place whereas Athena is pure serverless. Athena uses Presto and Spectrum uses its Redshift's engine

Are there any specific disadvantages for Athena or Redshift spectrum? Any limitations on using Athena or Spectrum ?

Answer

Jon Scott picture Jon Scott · May 9, 2018

I have used both across a few different use cases and conclude:

Advantages of Redshift Spectrum:

  • Allows creation of Redshift tables
  • Able to join Redshift tables with Redshift spectrum tables efficiently

If you do not need those things then you should consider Athena as well

Athena differences from Redshift spectrum:

  • Billing. This is the major difference and depending on your use case you may find one much cheaper than the other
  • Performance. I found Athena slightly faster.
  • SQL syntax and features. Athena is derived from presto and is a bit different to Redshift which has its roots in postgres.
  • Connectivity. Its easy enough to connect to Athena using API,JDBC or ODBC but many more products offer "standard out of the box" connection to Redshift

Also, for either solution, make sure you use the AWS Glue metadata, rather than Athena as there are fewer limitations.

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