Amazon Redshift vs Looker
Amazon Redshift
aws.amazon.com
Looker
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon Redshift | Looker |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.54/mo | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 3 |
| Spec score · Cloud Analytics Solutions | 8.3 (#6) | 8.2 (#9) |
| Deployment | It offers provisioned and serverless deployment options. | hybrid |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Security | Redshift supports encryption in transit and at rest, row- and column-level access controls, and dynamic data masking. | Looker documents TLS 1.2 or later for data in transit and AES-256 encryption for locally stored sensitive application data. |
| What it does | Amazon Redshift is a cloud data warehouse for SQL analytics across data warehouses and data lakes. | Looker helps organizations explore, share, and visualize company data to support business decisions. |
Plans
Amazon Redshift
- Provisioned$0.54 a month
- Serverless$1.50 a month
- Provisioned on-demand$0.54 a month
- Redshift Serverless on-demand$1.50 a month
In their own words
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift is a cloud data warehouse for SQL analytics across data warehouses and data lakes. It offers provisioned and serverless deployments, with options AWS says can scale to petabytes and support thousands of concurrent users. Redshift runs read-only SQL queries on Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi, and Delta Lake tables, plus open file formats in Amazon S3. Zero-ETL integrations connect with Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, and enterprise applications. Streaming ingestion connects with Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka. Listed integrations include QuickSight, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Alteryx, Jupyter Notebook, Informatica, dbt, MicroStrategy, and Looker. The Data API supports AWS SDK languages including Python, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, and C++. Security includes encryption, row- and column-level controls, and dynamic masking. It is paid, has no free plan, offers a free trial, and starts at $0.54 per month for Provisioned or $1.50 per month for Serverless.
Looker
Looker helps organizations explore, share, and visualize company data for business decisions. Its LookML semantic models define dimensions, aggregates, calculations, and relationships, then use those definitions to generate SQL queries. Gemini-powered natural-language analytics lets users ask questions, while Dashboard Agents provide summaries and explorations grounded in governed metrics. Looker connects to BigQuery, Spanner, Cloud SQL for MySQL, Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, and other Google services. The Looker Marketplace offers applications, prebuilt LookML models, visualizations, and actions for delivering data to third-party services. Listed capabilities include hourly refresh, row-level security, scheduled reports, and embedded analytics. Deployment is hybrid, with web, Android, iOS, API, and self-hosted options. Mobile apps let users view Looks and dashboards. Google documents TLS 1.2 or later for data in transit and AES-256 encryption for locally stored sensitive application data. A free 14-day trial is advertised, but there is no free plan. Standard, Enterprise, and Embed each list one production instance, 10 Standard Users, and two Developer Users; their API call allowances differ. Pricing is on request.