Redshift Cluster Cost Calculator
Price a Redshift cluster across node hours, managed storage, concurrency scaling above the free credits and Spectrum scans.
About Redshift Cluster Cost Calculator
Node-hours dominate, but the two components people forget are concurrency scaling and Spectrum. Redshift earns one free hour of concurrency scaling for every 24 hours the main cluster runs, so a cluster that is up all month accrues about 30 free hours and only the excess is billed at the same per-node rate — and Spectrum queries are priced per TB scanned exactly like Athena, entirely separately from the cluster. Every rate is an editable input with a realistic us-east-1 default, so confirm current Redshift prices with AWS for your region. A pause-and-resume schedule cuts node-hours but also cuts the concurrency-scaling credits it earns, so the cheapest configuration is rarely the one with the fewest running hours.
Formula
Redshift Cluster Cost
monthly = nodes × hourly × hours × (1 − reserved discount) + managed GB × rate + max(0, scaling hours − credits) × nodes × hourly + Spectrum TB × rate, where credits = 1 free hour per 24 hours of cluster uptime up to 30.
- credits
- One free concurrency-scaling hour per 24 hours the cluster runs, capped at 30 per month
- managed storage
- RA3 storage billed per GB-month independently of node count
- Spectrum
- External queries over S3, billed per TB scanned
Worked example
With the default values below, Redshift Cluster Cost Calculator returns Estimated Monthly Cost of $9,736.20. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Nodes in the clusteraccepts 1–128 nodes
- 4 nodes
- Node priceminimum 0 $/hour
- 3.26 $/hour
- Cluster hours per monthaccepts 0–744 hours
- 730 hours
- Reserved node discountaccepts 0–75 %
- 0 %
- RA3 managed storageaccepts 0–10,000,000 GB
- 8,000 GB
- Managed storage priceminimum 0 $/GB-month
- 0.024 $/GB-month
- Concurrency scaling usedaccepts 0–744 hours
- 10 hours
- Redshift Spectrum data scannedaccepts 0–100,000 TB
- 5 TB
- Spectrum priceminimum 0 $/TB
- 5 $/TB
Results
- Estimated Monthly Cost
- $9,736.20
- Node Hours
- $9,519.20
- Managed Storage
- $192.00
- Concurrency Scaling
- $0.00
- Redshift Spectrum
- $25.00
- Free Concurrency Scaling Credits
- 30 hours
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Redshift Cluster Cost
- 3Estimated Monthly Cost= 9,736.20
- 4Node Hours= 9,519.20
- 5Managed Storage= 192.00
- 6Concurrency Scaling= 0.00
- 7Redshift Spectrum= 25.00
- 8Free Concurrency Scaling Credits= 30 hours
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 9 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Redshift Cluster Cost calculated?
monthly = nodes × hourly × hours × (1 − reserved discount) + managed GB × rate + max(0, scaling hours − credits) × nodes × hourly + Spectrum TB × rate, where credits = 1 free hour per 24 hours of cluster uptime up to 30. Node-hours dominate, but the two components people forget are concurrency scaling and Spectrum. Redshift earns one free hour of concurrency scaling for every 24 hours the main cluster runs, so a cluster that is up all month accrues about 30 free hours and only the excess is billed at the same per-node rate — and Spectrum queries are priced per TB scanned exactly like Athena, entirely separately from the cluster. Every rate is an editable input with a realistic us-east-1 default, so confirm current Redshift prices with AWS for your region.
Why does Redshift Cluster Cost matter?
A pause-and-resume schedule cuts node-hours but also cuts the concurrency-scaling credits it earns, so the cheapest configuration is rarely the one with the fewest running hours.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 9 inputs: Nodes in the cluster, Node price, Cluster hours per month, Reserved node discount, RA3 managed storage, Managed storage price, Concurrency scaling used, Redshift Spectrum data scanned, Spectrum price. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
Are these prices current?
The defaults are realistic us-east-1 on-demand figures for RA3, but Redshift pricing varies by region and node family and Serverless is billed per RPU-hour instead. Confirm against the AWS Redshift pricing page for your region.