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Amazon Athena vs Azure AI Search 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

Amazon Athena
Ranking in Search as a Service
7th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure AI Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
5th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon Athena is 7.3%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure AI Search is 11.5%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Manilal Kasera - PeerSpot reviewer
A great AWS application that is easy to set up and simple to expand
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. We'd like it better if, for example, when you have some data, you can easily query it and you can easily read it at a glance. We'd like it to just be almost like a drag-and-drop situation. In Amazon Cloud, you actually have first to upload the data into S3. For that, you have to create a bucket. Now you have to create a Glue service, which will get you the schema. Then that schema would create basically a database and a table. After that, you have to go to Athena to query the data. It's a three-step process in Amazon Cloud. In Palantir, you just have to drag and drop.
Sandeep Srirangam - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer engagement & documentation about APIs are great, but it would be good if the UI is a bit more intuitive for search experience
I use the solution mainly to search the logs and to search for VMs by their names or subscription names. I wouldn't rate it great since the logs are a bit complicated The solution was really pretty good. The customer engagement was good. The presented documentation or exposure to the APIs to get…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon Athena is very stable. I never had any issues with it. The dashboarding tool is okay."
"It's easy to set up the product."
"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."
"Athena has a really good UI and is very compatible with on-prem products."
"The solution is very easy to use and integrations are very smooth."
"Because all communication is done via the REST API, data is retrieved quickly in JSON format to reduce overhead and latency.​"
"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."
"The product is extremely configurable, allowing you to customize the search experience to suit your needs."
"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."
"The customer engagement was good."
"The search functionality time has been reduced to a few milliseconds."
"The amount of flexibility and agility is really assuring."
"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's stability could be better."
"The after-hour services are slow."
"The pricing is room for improvement."
"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."
"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."
"For availability, expanding its use to all Azure datacenters would be helpful in increasing awareness and usage of the product.​"
"Adding items to Azure Search using its .NET APIs sometimes throws exceptions."
"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am happy with what they are charging and how they charge it, especially because they charge you per query, and not per series."
"It doesn't cost much if you are already part of the AWS ecosystem."
"The solution operates on a serverless model so you only pay for data that you consume."
"Athena is very inexpensive for being a cloud tool."
"The solution is affordable."
"The cost is comparable."
"​When telling people about the product, I always encourage them to set up a new service using the free pricing tier. This allows them to learn about the product and its capabilities in a risk-free environment. Depending on their needs, the free tier may be suitable for their projects, however enterprise applications will most likely required a higher, paid tier."
"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details.​"
"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Athena?
Athena has a really good UI and is very compatible with on-prem products.
What needs improvement with Amazon Athena?
You have to build out the metadata yourself because of the nature of the cloud.
What needs improvement with Azure Search?
The after-hour services are slow. It could be better.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Athena vs. Azure AI Search and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.