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Amazon EC2 vs Apache Spark comparison

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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Amazon EC2 delivers cost savings and efficiency, enhancing innovation and agility despite higher costs than on-premise solutions.
Sentiment score
5.6
Apache Spark provides up to 50% cost savings, boosting efficiency and reducing expenses significantly in machine learning analytics.
This cost factor has an impact on the project, giving us more possibilities to configure other services and greater financial freedom.
Data Engineer I at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
I would say I have saved more than a week with Amazon EC2 compared to my previous on-premises setup.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EC2 support is generally effective, though premium support excels, with some challenges in technical integration and communication.
Sentiment score
6.0
Apache Spark offers vibrant community support and resources, with commercial support available through vendors like Cloudera and Hadoop.
I would rate technical support from Amazon a 10, as we have on-prem AWS experts.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Amazon's customer support is much better than other clouds.
Data Engineer I at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the AWS support team a seven.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Principal Global Services
I would rate the technical support of Apache Spark an eight because when we had questions, we found solutions, and it was straightforward.
Consultant, Chief Engineer, Teamleiter at infoteam Software AG
I have received support via newsgroups or guidance on specific discussions, which is what I would expect in an open-source situation.
Data Architect at Devtech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EC2 is highly praised for its scalability and autoscaling features, contributing to cost efficiency and reliability.
Sentiment score
7.4
Apache Spark's scalability and versatility enable efficient large-scale data processing, making it a reliable choice for diverse teams.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EC2 is highly stable, with minimal downtime and issues usually caused by specific use cases or misconfigurations.
Sentiment score
7.4
Apache Spark is praised for its robust stability and reliability, with high user ratings despite minor configuration challenges.
Amazon EC2 is stable and more economical.
Data Engineer I at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
It is somewhat more reliable compared to Azure.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Principal Global Services
MapReduce needs to perform numerous disk input and output operations, while Apache Spark can use memory to store and process data.
Data Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Without a doubt, we have had some crashes because each situation is different, and while the prototype in my environment is stable, we do not know everything at other customer sites.
Data Architect at Devtech
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EC2 users seek cost reduction, improved documentation, better UI, seamless integrations, scalability, and more user-friendly tools.
Apache Spark needs improvements in real-time querying, user-friendliness, logging, large dataset handling, and expanded programming language support.
I have heard from multiple people that if you have an Amazon EC2 instance running and you stop it, the billing continues unless you terminate the Amazon EC2 instance.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There was not proper documentation on how to install the patch managers and automate patching with System Managers.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Principal Global Services
Various tools like Informatica, TIBCO, or Talend offer specific aspects, licensing can be costly;
Data Architect at Devtech
I find that there really lacks the technical depth to do any recommendations for future updates of Apache Spark.
Consultant, Chief Engineer, Teamleiter at infoteam Software AG
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 offers flexible, scalable pricing with potential savings, though cost management requires strategic planning to address complexities.
Apache Spark is cost-effective but can incur high infrastructure costs, especially in cloud setups like Databricks, with setup time variability.
I found it very cheap and a fair price according to what we need.
Data Engineer I at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
The licensing fees for Amazon EC2 are affordable, especially for lower tiers where there are fewer requirements or where the load is very low for product development.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Principal Global Services
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 provides scalable, flexible, cost-effective cloud resources with seamless AWS integration, security, and tools like Docker and Kubernetes.
Apache Spark provides scalable, in-memory data processing with flexible support for distributed computing, streaming, and machine learning integration.
With the cloud, deployment is easy, and within a minute, we can deploy the server and give it to the developers so they can work on it right away after deployment.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The main benefits Amazon EC2 provides for me as an end user are cost savings, as they are more OpEx costs rather than CapEx for us.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Amazon EC2 offers flexibility.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most important part is that everything can be connected, and the data exchange across overseas connections is fast and reliable.
Consultant, Chief Engineer, Teamleiter at infoteam Software AG
Apache Spark is the solution, and within it, you have PySpark, which is the API for Apache Spark to write and run Python code.
Data Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
The solution is beneficial in that it provides a base-level long-held understanding of the framework that is not variant day by day, which is very helpful in my prototyping activity as an architect trying to assess Apache Spark, Great Expectations, and Vault-based solutions versus those proposed by clients like TIBCO or Informatica.
Data Architect at Devtech
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 14.9%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 8.0%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon EC214.9%
Apache Spark8.0%
Other77.1%
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2879559 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer I at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Flexible virtual machines have accelerated data experimentation and reduced project costs
The best features that Amazon EC2 offers are the availability and the freedom to work with whatever I want. I can configure simpler machines to conduct quicker tests, or I can configure more robust machines according to what the project needs, including machines with a visual operating system. Regarding this flexibility, it impacts my day-to-day work and the projects I develop in terms of speed. If I want to test a project that has JavaScript with Angular and Node.js and I need to install MongoDB, I can configure a machine quickly, tailored for that, and get the data via API from somewhere. If I had to do this on my company machine, I would have to open a ticket with IT and explain the project. Something I could do in one day through my own processes would take two weeks through the company's procedures. Amazon EC2 has had a positive impact on my organization because its configuration offers more options than other clouds. Especially in the IoT area, we prefer to use AWS rather than Microsoft because of the robustness and security, whether in a gateway that we configure, in a firewall, or elsewhere. We adapted better to Amazon EC2.
Devindra Weerasooriya - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Devtech
Provides a consistent framework for building data integration and access solutions with reliable performance
The in-memory computation feature is certainly helpful for my processing tasks. It is helpful because while using structures that could be held in memory rather than stored during the period of computation, I go for the in-memory option, though there are limitations related to holding it in memory that need to be addressed, but I have a preference for in-memory computation. The solution is beneficial in that it provides a base-level long-held understanding of the framework that is not variant day by day, which is very helpful in my prototyping activity as an architect trying to assess Apache Spark, Great Expectations, and Vault-based solutions versus those proposed by clients like TIBCO or Informatica.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was fine. I found it very cheap and a fair price according to what we need.
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
I cannot think of a way for Amazon EC2 to be improved.
What is your primary use case for Amazon EC2?
I have been working as a data engineer for four years now. In my first year, I worked at a logistics company where I focused exclusively on data. At Energisa, I work in the innovation area, where I...
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?
I find that there really lacks the technical depth to do any recommendations for future updates of Apache Spark. I used it for two years for our prototype work and testing things, but because I had...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark?
I attempted to use Apache Spark in one of our customer projects, but after the initial test, our customer moved to another technology and another database system. I do not have any final remarks on...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
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 vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.