Amazon Athena
Serverless SQL over files in S3. You pay for the bytes scanned, so the way your files are laid out decides most of the bill.
Athena reads your files where they are. Nothing is loaded.
One SQL engine over the lake and beyond.
Files in S3
A table is a pointer: a schema, an S3 location and a format, read as-is at query time.
Apache Iceberg
Athena reads the table's own metadata to plan, and the same tables stay readable by Spark, EMR or Redshift.
Databases, DynamoDB, logs
Connectors run as Lambda functions, so the query also bills Lambda on your account.
Most of the bill comes from here.
Which file format
Compressed columnar files let Athena read only the columns you ask for, billed on the compressed size.
How it is partitioned
Partition on the column your queries filter by most. A partition key the queries never use saves nothing.
How you pay
Per-scan pricing fits irregular use. Steady, heavy use is worth comparing with provisioned capacity or a warehouse.
An Athena bill, in one line.
Build & optimize your data platform on AWS
State of the art, costs under control. Most bills grow with habits, not with data.
Read the approach →The one-page Amazon Athena field guide.
Best practices, cost traps and performance checks, in the order you should run them. Printable, no fluff.