Amazon Redshift clients rely closely on snapshots, that are point-in-time backups of their knowledge, for catastrophe restoration, compliance retention, and knowledge portability throughout AWS Areas. Amazon Redshift helps two forms of snapshots: automated and handbook. For provisioned clusters, automated snapshots are enabled by default and retained for as much as 35 days; handbook snapshots persist till you delete them. For serverless workgroups, Amazon Redshift mechanically creates restoration factors which can be retained for twenty-four hours, and you may also create handbook snapshots with a configurable retention interval. For particulars on snapshot creation and backup storage pricing, you possibly can seek advice from Amazon Redshift pricing for extra particulars.
Beginning June 8, 2026, Amazon Redshift is introducing an incremental snapshot billing mannequin for Amazon Redshift Serverless and Amazon Redshift RG (provisioned situations powered by AWS Graviton). With this enhancement, you pay just for the distinctive knowledge blocks throughout your lively handbook snapshots inside your account. This delivers important price financial savings for purchasers who’ve a number of snapshots that comprise largely equivalent knowledge blocks.
On this submit, you’ll find out how the brand new incremental snapshot billing mannequin works, the client use instances it addresses, and the way it helps you optimize prices whereas bettering your Restoration Level Goal (RPO).
Incremental snapshot billing
With this new billing mannequin, Amazon Redshift payments handbook snapshots primarily based on distinctive knowledge blocks. If you take a number of handbook snapshots of the identical workgroup or cluster, a lot of the info stays unchanged between snapshots. The billing mannequin acknowledges this overlap and expenses just for the distinctive knowledge blocks throughout your lively snapshots. Information that has not modified between snapshots is counted as soon as.
Take into account a ten TB knowledge warehouse with three handbook snapshots:
- Snapshot 1 (Day 1): Full backup, 10 TB of distinctive knowledge blocks
- Snapshot 2 (seconds later): Nothing modified, shares knowledge blocks with Snapshot 1, no extra cost
- Snapshot 3 (two days later): 1 TB of recent distinctive knowledge blocks created from modifications
- Complete billed: 11 TB of distinctive knowledge blocks
Utilizing this instance, clients pay for the ten TB of distinctive knowledge blocks in Snapshot 1 plus the 1 TB of recent distinctive knowledge block in Snapshot 3. Snapshot 2 shares its blocks with Snapshot 1, so it provides zero price. Therefore, complete 11 TB of distinctive knowledge blocks are billed.
Key billing mannequin particulars
With the brand new incremental snapshot billing mannequin, you might be charged just for the distinctive knowledge blocks on the current snapshot charges. Following are the important thing particulars of the brand new characteristic:
- Scope: Amazon Redshift Serverless and Amazon Redshift RG situations. Amazon Redshift RA3 situations retains the present tiered S3 billing.
- Fee: Based mostly on the present snapshot pricing on your Area.
- Deduplication degree: Account-level for Amazon Redshift Serverless and RG.
- Automated snapshots: Unchanged, nonetheless accessible at no extra price (35 days for Provisioned, 1 day for Serverless).
- Current snapshots: Mechanically transition to the incremental snapshot billing mannequin. No motion required.
This mannequin is very useful for purchasers needing backup retention past the automated snapshot home windows accessible at no extra price. Serverless clients needing backup past 24 hours can now take handbook snapshots realizing they pay for a singular knowledge block, making prolonged retention extra sensible and reasonably priced.
Advantages
With the incremental snapshot billing mannequin, buyer can undertake stronger knowledge safety methods at optimized prices:
Compliance-driven long-term retention
Regulated industries (monetary companies, healthcare, authorities, and life sciences) should typically retain backups for 90 days to five+ years. Since this billing mannequin expenses just for distinctive knowledge blocks, retention insurance policies turn out to be considerably extra reasonably priced as snapshots accumulate.
How this characteristic helps: Now you can preserve backup retention (90-day, 1-year, 7-year) on Amazon Redshift Serverless and RG at optimized price. A ten TB warehouse with 5% every day change fee retaining 90 days of every day snapshots pays for ~14.5 TB of distinctive knowledge blocks complete throughout all snapshots.
Catastrophe restoration with higher Restoration Level and Time Goals (RPO/ RTO)
Many shoppers need extra frequent snapshots (hourly as an alternative of every day) for tighter restoration aims. As a result of every extra snapshot is billed just for its new distinctive knowledge blocks, frequent backups are sensible and reasonably priced.
How this characteristic helps: You possibly can take hourly snapshots the place every one provides solely ~0.2% in new distinctive knowledge (assuming 5% every day change fee). Extra snapshots imply extra restoration factors and fewer knowledge loss in a failure state of affairs, all at optimized price.
Cross-Area catastrophe restoration at decrease price
Snapshots copied to a different area for catastrophe restoration are additionally billed primarily based on distinctive knowledge blocks. Organizations sustaining multi-Area catastrophe restoration (DR) methods pay proportionally to precise knowledge modifications, making geographic redundancy reasonably priced.
How this characteristic helps: In case you are working active-passive or active-active multi-Area architectures, you possibly can copy snapshots throughout Areas extra steadily, bettering cross-Area RPO whereas conserving DR prices proportional to precise knowledge modifications moderately than full dataset measurement.
Inexpensive prolonged backups
With the incremental snapshot billing mannequin, prolonged handbook backups are extra reasonably priced for purchasers, no matter their workload measurement. Even retention insurance policies (7-day, 14-day) price proportionally to precise knowledge modifications, for enhanced knowledge safety posture throughout the board.
How this characteristic helps: Clients now not want to decide on between knowledge safety and funds. This billing mannequin helps make prolonged retention price efficient for workloads of various sizes.
Pricing instance
For instance, you have got an Amazon Redshift Serverless workgroup with 10 TB of lively knowledge in US East (Ohio). You’re taking every day handbook snapshots with 7-day retention. Your knowledge modifications at 5% per day (0.5 TB/day).
| Part | Calculation | Month-to-month Value |
| Lively knowledge | 10 TB × 1,024 GB/TB × $0.023 | $235.52 |
| Distinctive snapshot blocks (after deduplication) | 13 TB × 1,024 GB/TB × $0.023 | $306.18 |
| Complete | $541.70 |
As a result of shared blocks throughout snapshots are counted solely as soon as. You pay for 13 TB of distinctive snapshot knowledge moderately than the complete cumulative measurement of all seven every day snapshots.
Compounding financial savings on Amazon Redshift RG
In case you are evaluating migrating from RA3 to RG, the financial savings stack considerably. A few of the compounding financial savings on RG embrace:
- RG situations are priced at 30% low cost as in comparison with RA3 situations.
- Reserved Situations (RI) pricing is accessible for RG which give additional compute financial savings.
- Incremental billing alleviates duplicate snapshot expenses for backup storage.
- Information lake queries are included in RG compute pricing, thereby avoiding the per-terabyte scanning expenses of Amazon Redshift Spectrum.
The mixed impact of those choices for RG can ship an combination better than 30% price discount over RA3. You possibly can lock in RI pricing on RG clusters for predictable, long-term financial savings on high of the incremental snapshot profit.
Getting began
No motion is required in your finish. Your current handbook snapshots mechanically transition to the incremental snapshot billing mannequin on June 8, 2026.
To maximise the profit:
- Evaluation your present snapshot utilization within the AWS Billing and Value Administration console.
- Enhance snapshot frequency. Extra frequent snapshots now price proportionally much less since every extra snapshot solely provides its distinctive knowledge blocks to your invoice.
- Lengthen retention insurance policies. Compliance pushed retention (90-day, 1-year, 7-year) is now considerably extra reasonably priced.
- Consider RA3 to RG migration. Take into account the 30% compute financial savings, mixed with RI eligibility throughout RG analysis for migrating from RA3.
- Discover Serverless. The improved billing mannequin makes Serverless an economical choice for purchasers who want backup retention past the 24-hour automated restoration level window.
Conclusion
The incremental snapshot billing mannequin for Amazon Redshift Serverless and Amazon Redshift RG expenses just for distinctive knowledge blocks throughout your snapshots. This helps extra frequent snapshots for higher catastrophe restoration, reasonably priced long-term compliance retention, and a compelling path to Amazon Redshift Serverless adoption. Mixed with Amazon Redshift RG’s 30% compute low cost and Reserved Situations, this delivers significant complete price financial savings throughout your whole Amazon Redshift spend.
Evaluation your snapshot technique in the present day and share your suggestions on AWS re:Put up. For full pricing particulars, go to the Amazon Redshift pricing web page.
In regards to the authors
Nidhi Nayak
Nidhi is a Senior Technical Account Supervisor with AWS, she helps enterprise clients construct scalable, high-performance cloud functions and optimize cloud operations. With over a decade of expertise in Information Analytics, Nidhi at the moment focuses on Redshift & Generative AI integration with Redshift.
Raza Hafeez
Raza is a Senior Product Supervisor, Technical at Amazon Redshift. He has 15+ years of expertise constructing and optimizing enterprise knowledge warehouses and is obsessed with making cloud analytics accessible and cost-effective for purchasers of all sizes.
Sushmita Barthakur
Sushmita is a Senior Information Options Architect at AWS, supporting Strategic clients architect their knowledge workloads on AWS. With a background in knowledge analytics, she has in depth expertise serving to clients architect and construct enterprise knowledge lakes, ETL workloads, knowledge warehouses and knowledge analytics options, each on-premises and the cloud. Sushmita relies in Florida and enjoys touring, studying and enjoying tennis.
Amy Huang
Amy is a Senior Monetary Analyst at AWS and a CPA with over 7 years of progressive expertise throughout Strategic Finance, Banking, and Auditing. She makes a speciality of pricing, monetary modeling and valuation, and data-driven evaluation. Exterior of labor, she enjoys yoga and mountaineering.