Serverless RPUs vs Provisioned RA3
Amazon Redshift Pricing Calculator
Model your monthly warehouse cost — Serverless RPU-hours or Provisioned RA3 nodes, plus managed storage and Spectrum scans. us-east-1 list pricing.
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Rates reviewed
Read the full breakdown — Companion pricing guide covers billing dimensions, traps, and a 30-day cleanup plan.
Compute mode
us-east-1list rates, pricing as of 2026-10-17. Concurrency scaling overage, cross-region snapshots, and Redshift ML excluded. Source: AWS public pricing.
Data analytics ·Serverless vs Provisioned guide ·Aurora calculator
Enter total RPU-hours consumed per month. Example: 64 RPU × 8 hrs/day × 22 days ≈ 11,264 RPU-hrs.
Storage & usage
Managed storage $0.024/GB-mo · Spectrum $5/TB (Provisioned only).
Minimum 2 nodes for multi-node HA clusters.
Use pause/resume or lower hours for dev/test.
Sum of (RPUs × active hours) across the workgroup.
For Serverless vs Provisioned break-even comparison.
Redshift Managed Storage (RMS) decoupled from compute.
Provisioned only — Serverless includes S3 queries in RPU-hrs.
$0.024/GB-mo for incremental snapshot blocks.
Estimated Redshift Cost
Compute + managed storage line items
Total Monthly Cost
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FactualMinds helps data teams choose Serverless vs Provisioned Redshift, right-size RA3 clusters, and model RI commitments before finance review.
Talk to Data Experts →Who This Tool Is For
Data platform leads choosing Serverless vs Provisioned for BI, ETL, or lakehouse serving layers.
Why We Built This Tool
Compute and storage bill separately; Serverless is not always cheaper below ~70% utilization.
What Problem It Solves
- 24/7 Provisioned without RI. On-Demand RA3 nodes running idle inflate the warehouse line item.
- Serverless base RPU floor. Active windows still consume RPU-hours even with auto-pause between queries.
- Spectrum on cold S3. Uncompressed text scans bill $5/TB — Parquet column pruning cuts costs 100×.
Read the full decision guide in our Redshift Serverless vs Provisioned post or explore cost optimization services.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an RPU in Redshift Serverless?
An RPU (Redshift Processing Unit) is the compute capacity unit for Serverless. You pay $0.375/RPU-hour in us-east-1 for active query time. Base RPU sets cold-start latency; max RPU caps burst scaling.
Is Redshift Serverless cheaper than Provisioned?
Not always. Serverless wins for intermittent workloads below ~70% utilization. For 24/7 analytics, Provisioned RA3 or RG with 1- or 3-year Reserved Nodes is about 34–62% cheaper than On-Demand (all upfront). RG nodes list 30% below their RA3 equivalents (rg.large $0.3801/hr vs ra3.large $0.543/hr).
How is Redshift Managed Storage priced?
RMS bills $0.024/GB-month in us-east-1, independent of compute. Data is stored on high-performance SSDs with automatic offload to S3 — you pay the same rate regardless of tier.
How does Redshift Spectrum pricing work?
Spectrum charges $5/TB of data scanned (Provisioned clusters only). Serverless includes S3 query costs in RPU-hours. Columnar formats like Parquet dramatically reduce bytes scanned.
Do Reserved Instances apply to Serverless?
No. RIs apply to Provisioned node-hours only. Serverless has separate Serverless Reservations: you commit to a fixed RPU count, billed 24/7, at $0.30/RPU-hour on a 1-year No Upfront term (20% off the $0.375 On-Demand rate) or up to 50% off on a 3-year All Upfront term; usage above the reservation bills On-Demand. Not modeled here, so only reserve the RPU floor you run around the clock.
Where do these Redshift prices come from?
Rates are AWS published us-east-1 list prices (Amazon Redshift pricing), pricing as of 2026-10-17.
