If you really need a datalake, spending a week setting it up is not so bad. We have a guide[0] here that will get you started in under an hour.
For smaller (e.g. under 10tb) data where you don't need real-time, DuckDB is becoming a really solid option. Here's on setup[1] we've played around with using Arrow Flight.
If you don't want to mess with any of this, we[2] spin it all up for you.
I think Iceberg can work in real time but the current implementations make it impossible.
I have a vision for a way to make it work. I made another comment here. Your blog posts were helpful, I digged a bit in the Duck Takes Flight code in python and rust.
I never found Athena expensive. Compared to employment cost it will be miniscule.
And some times, if your query is CPU extensive but the queried data size is not huge you can get a ridiculous value for money, like many CPU-days in 10 minutes for just $5 if your query covers 1TB after partitioning.
Query size limits are also configurable.
Obviously it depends on what data you are working on, but not having to set up and pay for a computational cluster is a huge cost saving.
Is Iceberg "easy" to set up? No.
Can you get set up in a week? Yes.
If you really need a datalake, spending a week setting it up is not so bad. We have a guide[0] here that will get you started in under an hour.
For smaller (e.g. under 10tb) data where you don't need real-time, DuckDB is becoming a really solid option. Here's on setup[1] we've played around with using Arrow Flight.
If you don't want to mess with any of this, we[2] spin it all up for you.
0 - https://www.definite.app/blog/cloud-iceberg-duckdb-aws
1 - https://www.definite.app/blog/duck-takes-flight
2 - https://www.definite.app/