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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling vs Apache Spark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
Ranking in Compute Service
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 10.4%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.4%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Awais Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
Pay-as-you-go and efficient with automated workload handling
I have been working with customers who use Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling for handling their workload on servers and scaling up the infrastructure as required.  As an instructor and cloud consultant, I help clients maintain and scale their infrastructure using this service to achieve zero downtime…
Dunstan Matekenya - PeerSpot reviewer
Open-source solution for data processing with portability
Apache Spark is known for its ease of use. Compared to other available data processing frameworks, it is user-friendly. While many choices now exist, Spark remains easy to use, particularly with Python. You can utilize familiar programming styles similar to Pandas in Python, including object-oriented programming. Another advantage is its portability. I can prototype and perform some initial tasks on my laptop using Spark without needing to be on Databricks or any cloud platform. I can transfer it to Databricks or other platforms, such as AWS. This flexibility allows me to improve processing even on my laptop. For instance, if I'm processing large amounts of data and find my laptop becoming slow, I can quickly switch to Spark. It handles small and large datasets efficiently, making it a versatile tool for various data processing needs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Having a load balancer in between is very helpful when you have huge traffic."
"The tool helps me to process large data sets while scaling up."
"The solution removes the need for hardware. We can easily create servers or machines. Just by clicking or specifying our requirements, like memory size or disk space, it's set up for us. The tool eliminates the need for hardware. We can choose what we need and pay as we use it. It is flexible and can integrate with any product."
"What we have found most valuable are the purchasing of usage at the time and small storage."
"We use the solution to increase CPU and memory size."
"We appreciate that this solution allows us to run all of our severs through it, meaning that our workloads are mainly on the EC2 instance only."
"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling has good integration."
"The easy possibility to spin up runtimes according to the needs of the POC, getting a runtime up and running in an easy way, which is accessible over the internet, is valuable for our process."
"We use Spark to process data from different data sources."
"With Hadoop-related technologies, we can distribute the workload with multiple commodity hardware."
"The features we find most valuable are the machine learning, data learning, and Spark Analytics."
"The scalability has been the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Apache Spark is known for its ease of use. Compared to other available data processing frameworks, it is user-friendly."
"With Spark, we parallelize our operations, efficiently accessing both historical and real-time data."
"The product is useful for analytics."
"This solution provides a clear and convenient syntax for our analytical tasks."
 

Cons

"We have found that the sizing in Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is far off. For example, we will see some at one terabyte and the other one is two terabytes. There is nothing between one and two terabytes. Sometimes it's a struggle if I need one and a half, I still am supposed to pay for two. There are five terabytes, six terabytes, and 12 terabytes, and if I need something at eight or nine, I'm still paying 30 to 40 percent more by taking the one which is 12 terabytes. Microsoft Azure does similar sizes but the gap can be more, such as six terabytes, and the next one is 12 terabytes."
"The spinning up in the solution can be much faster...The product should have a faster scalability option."
"If your EC2 instance doesn't boot up, you're in the dark about what's happening. It would be amazing if you could get a view of the console to see the status. There's something called the AWS Console, which is a web portal. I would like to see a virtual screen of an instance that hasn't started properly, so I can see where it crashed."
"EC2 is doing what it is intended to do, and I have no specific improvements to suggest."
"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling offers various benefits but lacks certain features for fine-grained customization compared to other cloud providers like GCP. Users are constrained by predefined instance families in EC2 when selecting instance types for scaling. Unlike GCP, where users can independently scale resources such as memory or CPU, EC2 doesn't offer this flexibility."
"The price could always be a bit better."
"Its stability and scalability need improvement."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"We've had problems using a Python process to try to access something in a large volume of data. It crashes if somebody gives me the wrong code because it cannot handle a large volume of data."
"It's not easy to install."
"Stability in terms of API (things were difficult, when transitioning from RDD to DataFrames, then to DataSet)."
"Technical expertise from an engineer is required to deploy and run high-tech tools, like Informatica, on Apache Spark, making it an area where improvements are required to make the process easier for users."
"We use big data manager but we cannot use it as conditional data so whenever we're trying to fetch the data, it takes a bit of time."
"Apache Spark can improve the use case scenarios from the website. There is not any information on how you can use the solution across the relational databases toward multiple databases."
"Apache Spark should add some resource management improvements to the algorithms."
"The migration of data between different versions could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than a few competitors."
"The licences for this solution are based on the number of instances. This determines the EC2 type that is used and this is then priced accordingly."
"The product's pricing depends on the traffic and workload."
"When we want to use more services, we need to pay more. It's a monthly subscription, rather than licensed-based. Pricing or fees for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling could be improved."
"The product is quite expensive."
"The product is cheap."
"As far back as I can remember, I have experience with two types of subscriptions. The first was my personal AWS base, and the second was a corporate license. I can't say much about the corporate license, but I recall they sent the bill every month for the personal subscription, though I could be mistaken."
"It's cost-effective."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"Apache Spark is an open-source tool."
"Apache Spark is not too cheap. You have to pay for hardware and Cloudera licenses. Of course, there is a solution with open source without Cloudera."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"It is an open-source platform. We do not pay for its subscription."
"We are using the free version of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
The solution removes the need for hardware. We can easily create servers or machines. Just by clicking or specifying our requirements, like memory size or disk space, it's set up for us. The tool e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
The pricing of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is moderate. It's not too expensive because we only pay for what we use. While there are cheaper options, the services provided are worth the cost. Previously...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
While Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is continually updated and has improved over time, the dashboard has become more complex and tricky for new users. The interface was easier to navigate in earlier vers...
What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
There is complexity when it comes to understanding the whole ecosystem, especially for beginners. I find it quite complex to understand how a Spark job is initiated, the roles of driver nodes, work...
 

Also Known As

AWS RAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.