Amazon Athena Reviews

Name: Amazon Athena
Brand: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

3.6 out of 5

5 reviews
80% willing to recommend

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What is Amazon Athena?

Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.

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Amazon Athena is the #7 ranked solution in top Search as a Service vendors. PeerSpot users give Amazon Athena an average rating of 7.2 out of 10. Amazon Athena is most commonly compared to Elastic Search: Amazon Athena vs Elastic Search. Amazon Athena is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 70% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 24% of all views.

Buyer's Guide

Search as a Service

July 2025

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Helped 866,218 peers since 2012

Featured Amazon Athena reviews

Manilal Kasera

Senior Software Engineer at Tiger Analytics

If you compare it with Palantir, if you have some data and you want to quickly have a look at it, then that feature is not available in Amazon Cloud. We'd like it better if, for example, when you have some data, you can easily query it and you can easily read it at a glance. We'd like it to just be almost like a drag-and-drop situation. In Amazon Cloud, you actually have first to upload the data into S3. For that, you have to create a bucket. Now you have to create a Glue service, which will get you the schema. Then that schema would create basically a database and a table. After that, you have to go to Athena to query the data. It's a three-step process in Amazon Cloud. In Palantir, you just have to drag and drop.

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MusaMongwe

Head of Data Practice at a tech consulting company with 201-500 employees

I think it would be better if the product were more mature. It's still a young product compared to Power BI or Qlik. I find that development is a bit difficult, but it might be because I'm used to other tools. The dashboarding capabilities could be better. The reporting and statement generation could be better. I couldn't technically initiate picture-perfect reporting, for example, to send out statements every month for banking customers.

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Gift Malahlela

Software Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

One of the most valuable features is the ability to partition your databases. I also like the federated query functionality, for cases when you have to query outside your S3 storage, or even completely outside of the AWS platform. There is also a useful feature called a metastore, which lets you access all the data you have shared across all your AWS accounts. Another perk is that Athena allows you to optimize your queries.

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Amazon Athena mindshare

As of August 2025, the mindshare of Amazon Athena in the Search as a Service category stands at 7.3%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon Athena	7.3%
Elastic Search	18.6%
Algolia	11.9%
Other	62.199999999999996%

Search as a Service

Key learnings from peers

Valuable Features

"Athena has a really good UI and is very compatible with on-prem products."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to partition your databases. I also like the federal query functionality, for cases when you have to query outside your S3 storage, or even completely outside of the AWS platform."
"Amazon Athena is very stable. I never had any issues with it. The dashboarding tool is okay."

Room for Improvement

"You have to build out the metadata yourself because of the nature of the cloud."
"One improvement I can suggest is that Athena needs to work better with third-parties. For example, the process of querying a Microsoft SQL warehouse could be improved."
"I think it would be better if the product were more mature. It's still a young product compared to Power BI or Qlik. I find that development is a bit difficult, but it might be because I'm used to other tools. The dashboarding capabilities could be better. The reporting and statement generation could be better. I couldn't technically initiate picture-perfect reporting, for example, to send out statements every month for banking customers."

Pricing

"Athena is very inexpensive for being a cloud tool."
"I am happy with what they are charging and how they charge it, especially because they charge you per query, and not per series."
"It doesn't cost much if you are already part of the AWS ecosystem."

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Search as a Service Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

University

Transportation Company

Educational Organization

Logistics Company

Retailer

Real Estate/Law Firm

Performing Arts

Wholesaler/Distributor

Consumer Goods Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Pharma/Biotech Company

Renewables & Environment Company

Local Government

Construction Company

International Affairs Institute

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Hospitality Company

Sports Company

Aerospace/Defense Firm

Leisure / Travel Company

Media Company

Outsourcing Company

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Amazon Athena customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

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Amazon Athena Reviews Summary
Author info	Rating	Review Summary
Senior Software Engineer at Tiger Analytics	3.5	Amazon Athena, part of AWS, works well with Glue for querying data, providing easy scalability and stable performance. However, it lacks the simplicity of Palantir as it requires multiple steps to upload and query data, unlike a straightforward drag-and-drop approach.
Data Architect at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees	3.5	I used Amazon Athena to load relational databases and transition from Hadoop, appreciating its UI and compatibility with on-premises products. However, a drawback is having to build the metadata ourselves due to its cloud-based nature.
Head of Data Practice at a tech consulting company with 201-500 employees	2.5	I use Amazon Athena for dashboarding and reporting. It's very stable, but it feels less mature compared to Power BI or Qlik. Dashboard and reporting capabilities could improve, especially in generating statement reports. Overall, development is challenging.
Software Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees	4.5	I have been using Amazon Athena to query data across AWS, particularly from Redshift and S3. I value its partitioning, federated queries, and metastore features, though improvements are needed for third-party integrations. Current projects are personal, not monetized yet.
Director & Lead Solutions Architect at Abylle Solutions	4.0	Our company utilizes Amazon Athena for client-specific data integration and analysis. The solution is user-friendly, cost-effective, and serverless. However, it requires a better API for direct data querying and visualization, as we currently use QuickSight for this purpose.