--- title: Amazon Athena Reviews meta\_title: 'Amazon Athena Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta\_description: Filter 173 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Amazon Athena works for a business like yours. aggregate\_rating: rating\_value: 4.4 review\_count: 173 scale: '5' date\_modified: '2026-08-09' parent\_category: name: Database Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/database-software --- # Amazon Athena Reviews & Product Details Visit Website Amazon Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that enables users to analyze large datasets directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. With no infrastructure to manage, Athena allows for quick, ad-hoc querying without the need for complex ETL processes. It automatically scales to execute queries in parallel, delivering fast results even for complex queries and large datasets. Key Features and Functionality: - Serverless Architecture: Athena requires no server management, automatically handling infrastructure scaling and maintenance. - Standard SQL Support: Users can run ANSI SQL queries, facilitating easy data analysis without learning new languages. - Broad Data Format Compatibility: Supports various data formats, including CSV, JSON, ORC, Avro, and Parquet, allowing flexibility in data storage and analysis. - Integration with AWS Glue: Seamlessly integrates with AWS Glue Data Catalog for metadata management, enabling schema discovery and versioning. - Security and Compliance: Provides robust security features, including data encryption at rest and in transit, and integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for fine-grained access control. Primary Value and User Solutions: Amazon Athena simplifies the process of analyzing vast amounts of data stored in Amazon S3 by eliminating the need for complex infrastructure setup and management. Its serverless nature and support for standard SQL make it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise. By enabling quick, cost-effective querying of large datasets, Athena addresses challenges related to data analysis speed, scalability, and operational overhead, empowering organizations to derive insights efficiently. * * * Product Website Amazon Athena Seller [Amazon Web Services (AWS)](https://www.g2.com/sellers/amazon-web-services-aws-3e93cc28-2e9b-4961-b258-c6ce0feec7dd) Discussions [Amazon Athena Community](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/discuss) Solution Type Best-of-Breed Overview by Jean-Louis Castro-Malaspina Show More ## Value at a Glance Averages based on real user reviews. ### Time to Implement 2 months ### Return on Investment 16 months [ View More Pricing Information ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/pricing) ## Top-Rated Alternatives [ ![Snowflake](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Snowflake") Snowflake 4.6/5(764) ](https://www.g2.com/products/snowflake/reviews) [ ![Microsoft SQL Server](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Microsoft SQL Server") Microsoft SQL Server 4.4/5(2,286) ](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-sql-server/reviews) [ ![DBeaver](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "DBeaver") DBeaver 4.4/5(172) ](https://www.g2.com/products/dbeaver/reviews) [ View All Alternatives ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/competitors/alternatives) ## User Insights Average based on 173 real user reviews. Implementation Time 2 months Perceived Cost $$$$$ [Log in to unlock pricing and user insights](/login) ## Amazon Athena Integrations (5) What do users say about integrations? Integration information sourced from real user reviews. [ ![Product Avatar Image](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Product Avatar Image") Amazon QuickSight ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-quicksight/reviews)[ ![Product Avatar Image](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Product Avatar Image") Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-simple-storage-service-s3/reviews)[ ![Product Avatar Image](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Product Avatar Image") AWS Glue ](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-glue/reviews)[ ![Product Avatar Image](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Product Avatar Image") Microsoft Power BI ](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-power-bi/reviews)[ ![Product Avatar Image](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Product Avatar Image") Python ](https://www.g2.com/products/python/reviews) Show More MS mani s. data engineer Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 5/26/2026 "Athena Makes S3 Data Validation Fast and Infrastructure-Free" 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? I use Amazon Athena in my day-to-day work for our project. What I like most about Athena is that it can query large datasets directly from Amazon S3 without having to manage any infrastructure. In my workplace, I use Athena regularly to validate processed data after Spark ETL jobs complete, and I compare source and target datasets with the help of Athena. After the ETL pipelines finish writing Parquet or CSV files into S3, I use Athena tables connected through the AWS Glue Data Catalog, then run SQL queries to verify record counts, null values, duplicates, partitioned data, and transformation outputs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? I don’t have any major dislikes. It’s a good final product, and it helps me a lot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? Amazon Athena solves the problem of analyzing large data stored in Amazon S3 without requiring a dedicated database server. In my workplace, it has benefited me for ETL validation and has helped with troubleshooting by allowing direct SQL queries on files stored in S3. I use Athena to quickly validate transformed data in my day-to-day work, and it makes the process much quicker. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Pradip G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Pradip G.") PG Pradip G. Technology Lead Computer Software Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 2/19/2026 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "Simple, Scalable and Cost-Effective Analytics with Amazon Athena" 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? What I like best about Amazon Athena is that it is very easy to use and fully serverless. We don’t need to manage any infrastructure, and we can directly query data stored in S3 using simple SQL. It saves time for data analysis and is very cost effective because we only pay for the data we scan. It also integrates well with other AWS services, which makes it very useful for analytics and reporting use cases Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? One thing I dislike about Amazon Athena is that the cost can increase quickly if queries are not optimized properly, since pricing is based on data scanned. For large and unpartitioned datasets, it becomes expensive. Also, performance sometimes depends heavily on how well the data is structured in S3. It is not ideal for very low-latency or real-time analytics use cases. Query debugging can also be slightly difficult for beginners. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? Amazon Athena is solving the problem of quickly analyzing large amounts of data stored in S3 without setting up servers or managing infrastructure. Earlier, we needed dedicated databases or clusters for analytics, which required time and cost to maintain. With Athena, we can directly run SQL queries on data and get insights within minutes. This is benefiting us by reducing infrastructure cost, saving operational effort, and enabling faster decision-making. It is especially helpful for ad-hoc analysis, log analysis, and reporting purposes. Overall, it improves productivity and makes data analytics more accessible for the team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Caleb F.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Caleb F.") CF Caleb F. Data & IA Specialist Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 2/11/2026 "Ad-hoc serverless analysis in S3 with SQL, natively integrated with AWS Glue" 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? What I value most is that it is serverless: it allows you to run standard SQL queries directly on data in Amazon S3, without having to provision infrastructure or move the information through ETL processes. In practice, it is super useful for performing quick and ad-hoc exploratory analysis on Parquet or JSON files within our Data Lake. Additionally, by integrating natively with the AWS Glue Data Catalog, metadata management becomes almost transparent and much simpler. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? What I like the least is that the charge per TB scanned can become quite unpredictable if the queries are not well optimized (for example, when there are no partitions or compression is not used). A simple "SELECT" on a large dataset can turn out to be surprisingly expensive. Additionally, performance drops significantly with the typical problem of many small files in S3 (small file problem), and that ends up forcing us to add extra compaction processes with AWS Glue to maintain efficiency. And, finally, it is not the best option for low-latency reports or with high concurrency: in those scenarios, Redshift still performs better. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? It helps us analyze raw data that is in our Data Lake on S3 immediately, without having to first build complex ETL pipelines or load everything into a Data Warehouse. The biggest benefit is agility: we can validate the quality of the data and perform exploratory (ad-hoc) queries with standard SQL in a matter of seconds. This greatly accelerates our development cycle and also reduces costs, because we avoid processing and storing data in Redshift that we don't yet know will actually be useful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: OrganicAI Translated ![Chetan M.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Chetan M.") CM Chetan M. Software Engineer Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 4/2/2026 "Amazon Athena: Simple, Fast Data Exploration That Saves Money" 4.5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? Amazon Athena helps us explore and test data easily without having to set up a lot of things. It’s very simple to use, works well with AWS, and delivers faster results. It also saves money, is easy to get started with, and includes smart features that help us use our data better. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? The screen is simple, but it can be confusing for beginners. Query costs can also get high, and performance really depends on how the data is organized. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? It helps us validate ETL job data, catch problems early, and make sure our ETL jobs are working the right way. This saves time and improves data quality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Our network of Icons are G2 members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions and commitment to helping others through their expertise.G2 IconCurrent UserValidated ReviewerSource: G2 invite ![Chaim and Liora S.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Chaim and Liora S.") CS Chaim and Liora S. Senior Data Engineer Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 4/23/2026 "Easy, Fast, and Affordable ANSI SQL with Smooth Language Integrations" 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? It's easy to use, very fast performance, uses ANSI SQL, relatively cheap compared to other options and it's easy to integrate with programming languages using libraries. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? It’s harder to monitor performance issues. Since it’s basically file-based on S3, concurrency can also be a problem when using regular tables, especially compared to Iceberg. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? Excellent for quick data analysis on large datasets stored in a data lake. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Our network of Icons are G2 members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions and commitment to helping others through their expertise.G2 IconCurrent UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Telecommunications](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Telecommunications") IT Verified User in Telecommunications Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 4/28/2026 "Straightforward S3 Data Extraction Made Easy" 4/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? It’s been great working with S3 data. I really loved the data extraction feature that uses an S3 bucket—it made pulling the data I needed straightforward. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? I’m not able to use UPDATE statements in Athena, which is a drawback for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? We can directly query the S3 data coming from CloudFront and then forward it for analysis using QuickSight for visualization and other things, which is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic Review from User Profile ![Atharva P.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Atharva P.") AP Atharva P. Cloud BI Engineer Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 5/8/2026 "Streamlined Analytics with Serverless Scalability" 4.5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? I like that Amazon Athena offers serverless querying directly on data without having to manage any infrastructure. It's very fast to set up, which is ideal for our analytics needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? Query cost can increase with large datasets and file formats if they are not optimized properly. Performance tuning also requires careful data organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? n/a Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Our network of Icons are G2 members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions and commitment to helping others through their expertise.G2 IconValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Zoe M.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Zoe M.") ZM Zoe M. Data & BI Engineer Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 8/10/2025 "I work as a Cloud Data Engineer and I use Athena daily." 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? It is easy to use Athena, whether you are a tech or a non-tech person. It has a very user-friendly interface, and the thing that I like the most is that you can query many types of source input data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? I don't find it helpful when I need to query the data and make updates. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? I use Athena by querying data in s3, our Data LakeHouse. Athena has a very nice, easy user interface, it is cheap and very helpful for querying many types of data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerSource: Organic ![Verified User in Banking](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Banking") UB Verified User in Banking Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 2/19/2026 "Athena Makes S3 Data Analysis Fast and Easy" 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? Athena is a great fit when I need to run analysis on data stored in S3. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? It is cloud-native with respect to AWS. We need a solution that sits on top of the AWS cloud and also supports a multi-cloud setup. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? Athena helps me run analysis on data stored in S3, and it can also connect with other AWS data stores. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Milan S.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Milan S.") MS Milan S. Senior AI Engineer Apparel & Fashion Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 11/12/2023 "A Powerful and Cost-Effective Serverless Query Service for Big Data" 5/5 What do you like best about Amazon Athena? Amazon athena is very powerful serverless solution and it's very cost-effective. I like the user-friendly interface that athena provides to query data from any table present in the S3. I use athena to query data almost on a regular basis. The customer support is also very helpful with the queries regarding anything. It was very easy to implement because of very powerful documentation provided by AWS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Amazon Athena? There are very few things that I don't like about athena, like occasional lags when querying large datasets, there are also some features missing that could have helped the user a lot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Amazon Athena solving and how is that benefiting you? It is helping me by removing manual scaling of infrastructure when more data starts flowing in, it saves a lot of time. And also its helping by handling queries to extract large datasets. It has made my life very easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More 12/20/2023 Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ## Questions about Amazon Athena? Ask real users or explore answers from the community Get practical answers, real workflows, and honest pros and cons from the G2 community or share your insights. [ Ask about Amazon Athena ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/discussions/new) GU Guest User What is Amazon Athena used for? 0 Upvotes 0 [ Join the conversation ](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-amazon-athena-used-for) GU Guest User • Last activity over 3 years ago Is AWS Athena free? 0 Upvotes 1 [ Join the conversation ](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-aws-athena-free) [ View all Discussions ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/discuss) ## Pricing Insights Averages based on real user reviews. ### Time to Implement 2 months ### Return on Investment 16 months ### Average Discount 10% [ View More Pricing Information ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/pricing) Amazon Athena Comparisons ![Product Avatar Image](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/small_square/small_square_b3390b4cc3d92e87d570895f7358c003/amazon-aurora.jpg "Product Avatar Image") Amazon Aurora 4.5/5(458) [ Compare Now ](https://www.g2.com/compare/amazon-athena-vs-amazon-aurora) ![Product Avatar Image](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/small_square/small_square_0148ca76408710a295015ec26b43fd3e/amazon-relational-database-service-rds.jpg "Product Avatar Image") Amazon Relational Database... 4.5/5(909) [ Compare Now ](https://www.g2.com/compare/amazon-athena-vs-amazon-relational-database-service-rds) ![Product Avatar Image](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/small_square/small_square_2b00e05c107c3273cea5264090c3c1d0/snowflake.jpg "Product Avatar Image") Snowflake 4.6/5(764) [ Compare Now ](https://www.g2.com/compare/amazon-athena-vs-snowflake) ##### ##### Amazon Athena Features Configuration Application Performance Orchestration Database Monitoring Database Administration Provisioning Governance Auditing Availability Scalability Backup Archiving Security Data Masking Authentication And Single Sign-On [ View More Features ](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/features) ##### Categories on G2 [Database as a Service (DBaaS)](https://www.g2.com/categories/database-as-a-service-dbaas)[Database Management Systems (DBMS)](https://www.g2.com/categories/database-management-systems-dbms) ##### Explore More [Which yard management system integrates best with WMS and TMS platforms for a mid-size warehouse that needs the three systems to share data automatically?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-yard-management-system-integrates-best-with-wms-and-tms-platforms-for-a-mid-size-warehouse-that-needs-the-three-systems-to-share-data-automatically)[Which AI content tool offers the most natural language output?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-ai-content-tool-offers-the-most-natural-language-output)[Which Oracle EBS resellers have the strongest implementation expertise and methodology for large-scale projects?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-oracle-ebs-resellers-have-the-strongest-implementation-expertise-and-methodology-for-large-scale-projects) [What cloud-based DNS security providers work well for a company with global offices that needs consistent policy enforcement without routing all traffic through one location?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-cloud-based-dns-security-providers-work-well-for-a-company-with-global-offices-that-needs-consistent-policy-enforcement-without-routing-all-traffic-through-one-location)[Leading CPaaS platforms for enterprise](https://www.g2.com/discussions/leading-cpaas-platforms-for-enterprise)[Pros and Cons Details](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-athena/reviews?qs=pros-and-cons) [Show MoreShow Less](javascript:void(0);)