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Algolia vs Amazon Athena comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Algolia
Ranking in Search as a Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon Athena
Ranking in Search as a Service
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Algolia is 9.8%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Athena is 5.5%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Algolia9.8%
Amazon Athena5.5%
Other84.7%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Zaid bin junaid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Flash.co
Navigation has needed simplification while AI search has delivered faster, more relevant answers
Algolia has multiple features, but the one I love most is the AI-powered relevance, which helps us search anything within our systems. It ensures that search results are optimized using accuracy and personalization for our organization. The second feature I value is real-time indexing, which provides instant updates and ensures that search results reflect the latest content and inventory. Additionally, Algolia tailors search based on user behavior. For example, as a user, it tailors the behavior by giving preferences and context. It works on LLM models, which is the main reason they are able to personalize behavior. Another feature I appreciate is the ability to monitor search performance and conversion metrics. The reason Algolia's AI-powered relevance and real-time indexing have made a difference is that the features provided have given us an outstanding service. It works extremely well with no downtime, no defects, and no bugs. Whatever we search for, it provides instant results. That is why we prefer them over others.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Have struggled with exporting complex data and have disabled code suggestions due to inefficiency
I think there is room for improvement in Amazon Athena, and the first thing I will put is the data output. I use Python to query in Amazon Athena, and it's very complex and difficult just to save Amazon Athena results as an Excel file. The only option is copying the data, but sometimes if it exceeds 100 lines, if you copy and paste in Excel, it's very bad. You can't copy above 100 lines. The other option is downloading a CSV file, but the CSV file is not UTF-8 Unicode. Here in Brazil, we speak Portuguese, and there are a lot of special characters in the words and even names, and everything gets garbled when you put it in a CSV. You have to decode, encode, and there are a lot of problems. It could easily save as an Excel file since there are a lot of engines to help with it, so an XLSX file extension could be this way. Another point I would mention is the word completion. When I'm coding and making statements and queries, Amazon Athena tries to help me write the code, and that's very problematic. Sometimes I'm using some tables that I use every day, and Amazon Athena doesn't get the tables I'm using and suggests very improbable data. I have access to more than 30 databases and hundreds of tables. So, I turn it off, I disable the word completion because when I'm coding, the word completion makes the coding slower. It's very difficult, and every time I have to press escape to skip the completion. It's very ineffective, so I disable it because in other applications it functions very well, such as VS Code.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Algolia provides some cool functionalities like filtering, indexing, and searching."
"The tool is worth the money, and I have seen an ROI."
"It's scalable. It can be scaled massively."
"It has many fine-tuning configurations. Essentially, every single piece of information you pass through it is a free document you can tailor."
"The tool is easy to use, but you need to know how it works."
"The Algolia solution really helped us to improve our conversion rate and click through rate."
"Since Algolia is a SaaS solution, we didn't have to maintain servers, look at the indexes, and monitor services."
"The tool provides users with personalization features that can be used to improve user interface."
"The solution is very easy to use and integrations are very smooth."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to partition your databases. I also like the federal query functionality, for cases when you have to query outside your S3 storage, or even completely outside of the AWS platform."
"It's easy to set up the product."
"Athena has a really good UI and is very compatible with on-prem products."
"Amazon Athena works for scalability; I query data using tagged data that uses user usage of applications that contain very big data, millions and billions of lines, and it works very well."
"Amazon Athena is very stable. I never had any issues with it. The dashboarding tool is okay."
 

Cons

"I think they could improve the analytics view."
"Algolia is not adopted that much, and it would be great if it were made more popular."
"Joining is quite complex."
"The documentation for the service is not as good as it could be."
"When indexing the products, one may face some issues with the tool."
"The deployment could be easier for beginners."
"Algolia provides a certification, which is pretty basic, and I think it can be improved in terms of a bit more detail and more elaborative content."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"You have to build out the metadata yourself because of the nature of the cloud."
"The solution should include a better API for query services."
"If you compare it with Palantir, if you have some data and you want to quickly have a look at it, then that feature is not available in Amazon Cloud."
"I think it would be better if the product were more mature. It's still a young product compared to Power BI or Qlik. I find that development is a bit difficult, but it might be because I'm used to other tools. The dashboarding capabilities could be better. The reporting and statement generation could be better. I couldn't technically initiate picture-perfect reporting, for example, to send out statements every month for banking customers."
"One improvement I can suggest is that Athena needs to work better with third-parties. For example, the process of querying a Microsoft SQL warehouse could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the cost of Algolia, the tool is really expensive for us in Brazil since it comes to about half a million dollars."
"We are currently on a contract with Algolia for licensing and price."
"For any developer starting out, it is worth it."
"Algolia is a cool, super-easy-to-use, and affordable tool."
"The product is cheap."
"I have heard that Algolia is an expensive solution."
"Athena is very inexpensive for being a cloud tool."
"I am happy with what they are charging and how they charge it, especially because they charge you per query, and not per series."
"The solution operates on a serverless model so you only pay for data that you consume."
"It doesn't cost much if you are already part of the AWS ecosystem."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Performing Arts
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Algolia?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Algolia are based on a pay-as-you-go model, which is very efficient. The costs are very transparent and have detailed breakdowns for any kind of queries c...
What needs improvement with Algolia?
Algolia provides good value for money. However, personally, I feel the UI is a bit difficult to understand and could be more user-centric. The navigation part of Algolia is different from other too...
What is your primary use case for Algolia?
Algolia is used in my organization primarily for AI search to enhance product search for recommendations. It helps us support our knowledge bases, particularly Confluence, and maximizes the outcome...
What needs improvement with Amazon Athena?
I don't have any specific answer on how Amazon Athena can be improved. This integration is more on the Glue side rather than on Amazon Athena, I would guess. Nothing comes to my mind here. In terms...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Athena?
The typical use case for Amazon Athena is that we have data in a data lake, and if we need to query the data from the data lake, we use Amazon Athena before it gets to the data warehouse where we w...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Athena?
I have experience of integration of Amazon Athena with AWS Glue. I think the pricing of Amazon Athena is quite reasonable as we use it in pay-as-you-go mode. On a scale from one to ten, I rate Amaz...
 

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Find out what your peers are saying about Algolia vs. Amazon Athena and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.