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Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Oracle Exadata 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

Oracle Autonomous Data Ware...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
Oracle Exadata
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Kwajah Mohiuddin - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Head of Architecture at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides self-repair features, but the setup is complex
We use the product for online applications. We use it in the financial industry The product has self-repair features. The tool tunes itself. It separates compute from storage. We can scale storage and compute separately. The setup is complex. Oracle is a complex tool. I have been using Oracle…
Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Has consistently delivered high performance and aligned security while evolving with AI-driven improvements
When discussing Oracle Exadata, the main thing is the specialized database appliance, the flash cache, and the engineered machine on the database for the database itself. Overall, all the features are useful and meaningful for any database like Oracle to run the Oracle database. Regarding Smart Scan technology, it is for better performance. If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself. Oracle Exadata's advanced compression techniques have affected my customer's data storage efficiency positively, with the feature being great, but as of now, our customer is not using that. I find its security measures align with my customer's organization, as security is aligned as per the customer's requirement. It has helped optimize performance and cost.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The product has self-repair features."
"One advantage is that if you already have an Oracle Database, it easily integrates with that."
"The autonomous database provides several benefits and unmatched performance."
"With Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, things are much simpler. Creating a structure, initializing the servers, extending the servers, those are all things that are very, very easy. That's the main reason we use it."
"It provides Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) capabilities by default to address data security issues."
"I highly recommend it for companies who want to test their application functionality, dev, or test DBs for cost optimization."
"Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse is used globally to deliver extreme performance on large Financial data sets."
"No one else could provide a solution with this performance, for us."
"Exadata accelerates the performance to whole applications in the environment at least by 2-3x times than the old hardware."
"The most valuable feature is that you have the same familiar environment of an Oracle database but with the additional performance you get from this architecture."
"A valuable feature is that everything goes into one machine; Oracle and the applications, so that is a big advantage."
"We have a complete HA environment with two Exadata machines across two datacenters, and we've been able to use Data Guard to perform switchovers, perform maintenance, and do other tasks with little or no downtime at all."
"The product is very, very stable and mature."
"Smart scan and smart indices are the most valuable features."
"It's definitely been stable for us; over a four-year period, we had zero outages."
 

Cons

"It is good as data warehouses go, but it is not that good for really big data."
"There is a need for more storage to be allocated, but over a period of time, it becomes impossible to reduce it after using it."
"Optimization should be better."
"The solution lacks visibility options."
"Oracle should increase visibility options because what's available now is limited."
"An improvement for us would be the inclusion of support for an internal IP, so we could use it directly with the VCN in Oracle Cloud."
"I would like to see Application Express and Oracle R Enterprise fully supported, and I would like to see Oracle Data Mining supported as a front end."
"Sometimes the solution works differently between the cloud and on-premises. It needs to be more consistent and predictable."
"There is a feature for security, but it is not included in the first purchase of this solution. That means if you need to increase the security, you need to buy the security feature which doesn't come by default on these solutions."
"Customer Service: It leaves a lot to be desired. It has improved; but still a lot to go."
"A few improvements can be made such as better resource optimization, virtualization where you can see the virtual machine on top of the Exadata, the ability to limit CPUs, and reduced license costs."
"Customer Service: It is good and sometimes we don't get exact recommendations even though we give all details but it was satisfactory."
"Price. Extremely expensive."
"It can be difficult to patch and maintain because there are so many databases running on it."
"Setting up Exadata is complex. You need an Oracle vendor or someone who is Oracle-certified to set it up."
"We have experienced some issues with processing unstructured data on Exadata. This is an important requirement for our AIML based use case. Reactive analytics data can not be prepared easily in Oracle Exadata."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse's pricing is fair and reasonable compared to the other cloud vendors."
"ROI is high."
"Cloud solutions are cheaper, but in the long run, they may not be much cheaper. They certainly have a lower initial cost. The licensing is yearly, and it is based on the size of the hardware and the number of users."
"In terms of architecture and pricing structure, I feel it is a little bit costly compared to Azure. It's fine compared to RedShift, but compared to Azure, it's a bit pricey when you calculate for one TB storage plus around five hours of reporting with the frequency of 1TB data. The cost adds up, making Oracle a bit expensive."
"The solution's cost is reasonable."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"The price depends on the configuration we choose."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution’s cost is a little bit more than the traditional databases."
"You have to pay for the storage and the database in Oracle Exadata. It cost a lot, but it is worth it. It would be a benefit if we could reduce the price for the number of CPUs and extend the memory."
"I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten."
"It is an expensive product and you pay more for certain performance enhancements."
"Oracle Exadata is not a cheap solution. Pricing is a problem for Oracle, and every client, not just my company, would like the vendor to improve on the price, or lower the price. My company paid for several years' worth of Oracle Exadata licenses. You need to pay for the technical support and other features separately, on different contracts. In terms of affordability, my rating for Oracle Exadata is two out of five."
"Oracle Exadata is costly. Its licensing should also be more versatile. Smaller companies would benefit if Oracle Exadata had lower pricing."
"The licensing can be a bit expensive because you need to have certain tools enabled that require them."
"I'm giving Oracle Exadata five out of ten in terms of pricing. Its price could be lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Media Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?
We pay approximately $70,000 per month. The cost includes maintenance and support.
What needs improvement with Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?
Optimization should be better. The SQLs are sometimes very slow. I also noticed that Java is not supported, which is not ideal.
What is your primary use case for Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?
We are using Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse for analytics in my company.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly. Even you can talk to the d...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Exadata?
I deal most with Oracle database. I have been working with Oracle Database Appliance for more than 25 years, and if you're talking about appliance, it's more than 10 years, but on Oracle database, ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hertz, TaylorMade Golf, Outront Media, Kingold, FSmart, Drop-Tank
PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Teradata, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.