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AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon Redshift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 22, 2025

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 Redshift
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift is 7.5%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.7%, up from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Redshift7.5%
AWS Lake Formation5.7%
Other86.8%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Sriram-Natesan - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to create a lot of views or materialized views is beneficial
Improvement in the immediate response and the process of getting into a call could be helpful. We have had to wait for at least twenty-four hours to get a call and then wait for a couple more hours for a solution. Improved connectivity to different BI tools and already published connectors for major tools in AWS could enhance the service.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows for the storage of huge amounts of data."
"I like the cost-benefit ratio, meaning that it is as easy to use as it is powerful and well-performing."
"The main benefit is that our portal for end users is running in AWS, so we can easily connect it to other AWS services."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"Redshift's versioning and data security are the two most critical features. When migrating into the cloud, it's vital to secure the data. The encryption and security are there."
"We have found Machine Learning use cases are very nice."
"Changing from local servers to the cloud is very easy. It's so nice not to have to worry about physical servers."
"The most valuable feature of Redshift is its cluster."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."
 

Cons

"The solution has four maintenance windows so, when it comes to stability, I think it would be better to decrease their number."
"Amazon Redshift does not work alone and requires integration with other AWS tools like S3 and Glue for a complete ecosystem."
"It lacks a few features which can be very useful, such as stored procedures"
"Amazon should provide more cloud-native tools that can integrate with Redshift like Microsoft's development tools for Azure."
"There are physically too many pipelines for a company of this size to maintain. For a data scientist, it's very difficult to learn the data in all of these different environments."
"The solution could improve in handling more data formats and more native support for RDF."
"It takes a lot of time to ingest and update the data."
"It is not easy to deal with queries in Amazon Redshift and see the same data."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."
"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"BI is sold to our customer base as a part of the initial sales bundle. A customer may elect to opt for a white labeled site for an up-charge."
"For Amazon Redshift, we pay around INR 60,000 annually. The cost factor also depends on the number of existing customers."
"It's pay per use. You can have multiple models."
"Redshift is very cost effective for a cloud based solution if you need to scale it a lot. For smaller data sizes, I would think about using other products."
"One of my customers went with Google Big Query over Redshift because it was significantly cheaper for their project."
"I have heard complaints about the solution’s pricing, and thus I rate it as a five."
"The product is quite expensive."
"It's not very pricey compared to other tools. I would rate the price as 5 out of 10."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Media Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Amazon Redshift?
The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good.
What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?
It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
I don't know any features that I would want to see included in the future releases of AWS Lake Formation. Making queries in SQL is a reality now, and in the future, it would be beneficial if AWS im...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon Redshift and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.