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Amazon EMR pros and cons

3.9 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

Buyer's Guide

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon EMR stands out with its ability to resize clusters and offers flexibility and scalability for managing big data.
The managed services provide stability and scalability, offering valuable features including support for Apache Hudi and out-of-the-box functionality for leveraging big data tools like Spark and Hadoop.
Setup is straightforward, allowing for easy transitions of big jobs from on-prem to EMR with Spark, demonstrating good fault tolerance and streamlined project management.
Amazon EMR excels in processing speed and data storage capacity, offering a variety of options and strong security features derived from its managed services model.
Multiple connectors in Amazon EMR enable seamless integration with various data sources, and it facilitates faster insights by efficiently cleaning and transforming data.

CONS

Legacy versions are not supported in new versions, and new releases often break old versions.
Dashboard management and control over user scaling and costs are lacking.
Configuring and ensuring correct cluster operation is complicated.
Spark jobs run slower on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences.
Initial setup is time-consuming, with pricing strategy and module notification improvements needed.
 

Amazon EMR Pros review quotes

reviewer1343079 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Oct 6, 2025
Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop.
reviewer2043696 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Dec 26, 2025
We are using Amazon EMR to clean the data and transform the data in such a way that the end-user can get the insights faster.
MM
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Apr 8, 2025
I rate Amazon EMR as ten out of ten.
Learn what your peers think about Amazon EMR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.
JC
Director of Data Science at HealthWorks Analytics
Jun 14, 2024
The security of the managed workflow and the managed services are the best features for us. Since we inherited their security model and it's all managed services, those are the key benefits for our clients.
Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President -Product Management at Paytm
Nov 26, 2024
Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources.
Quan Vu - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Governance Manager at VPBFC
Aug 22, 2023
It allows users to access the data through a web interface.
CG
AWS / Big Data Engineer at Waste Management, Inc.
Aug 1, 2023
The initial setup is straightforward.
Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Development Engineer at Yahoo!
Aug 3, 2022
When we grade big jobs from on-prem to the cloud, we do it in EMR with Spark.
Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President -Product Management at Paytm
May 18, 2022
The solution is pretty simple to set up.
RahulJadhav - PeerSpot reviewer
Hadoop Administrator at Capgemini
Oct 17, 2022
In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance.
 

Amazon EMR Cons review quotes

reviewer1343079 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Oct 6, 2025
In Qubole, the interface was very good. I could see many details because in Amazon EMR console, very few details are available.
reviewer2043696 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Dec 26, 2025
I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR.
MM
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Apr 8, 2025
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.
Learn what your peers think about Amazon EMR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.
JC
Director of Data Science at HealthWorks Analytics
Jun 14, 2024
The solution can become expensive if you are not careful.
Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President -Product Management at Paytm
Nov 26, 2024
Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences.
Quan Vu - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Governance Manager at VPBFC
Aug 22, 2023
There is no need to pay extra for third-party software.
CG
AWS / Big Data Engineer at Waste Management, Inc.
Aug 1, 2023
There is room for improvement in pricing.
Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Development Engineer at Yahoo!
Aug 3, 2022
The problem for us is it starts very slow.
Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President -Product Management at Paytm
May 18, 2022
We don't have much control. If we have multiple users, if they want to scale up, the cost will go and increase and we don't know how we can restrict that price part.
RahulJadhav - PeerSpot reviewer
Hadoop Administrator at Capgemini
Oct 17, 2022
Amazon EMR can improve by adding some features, such as megastore services and HiveServer2. Additionally, the user interface could be better, similar to what Apache service provides, cross-platform services.