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Amazon EMR vs AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 EMR
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd), Cloud Data Warehouse (14th)
AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (6th), BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (57th), Data Governance (48th), BI on Hadoop (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Amazon EMR and AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Amazon EMR is designed for Hadoop and holds a mindshare of 10.4%, down 13.6% compared to last year.
AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3), on the other hand, focuses on Data Virtualization, holds 4.8% mindshare, down 9.8% since last year.
Hadoop Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon EMR10.4%
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop14.1%
HPE Data Fabric13.5%
Other62.0%
Hadoop
Data Virtualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3)4.8%
Denodo21.4%
TIBCO Data Virtualization17.6%
Other56.2%
Data Virtualization
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1343079 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has simplified ETL workflows with on-demand processing but needs improved cost efficiency and visibility
I have used AWS Glue with S3 for making tables and databases, but regarding Amazon EMR, I do not remember much as we are currently using it very minimally. This is my observation: In EKS, we have had to deploy by ourselves because EKS does not provide the Hadoop framework, Spark, Hive, and everything, but we have completed all the deployment ourselves. Whereas Amazon EMR provides all these things. The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2. In Qubole, the interface was very good. I could see many details because in Amazon EMR console, very few details are available. In Qubole, at one link, you can get all the details of what is happening, how the processes are running, and the cost decreased by using Qubole. I found Qubole more user-friendly and cost-effective. From the security point of view, we had to open some access rights to Qubole, which might be a drawback in comparison to Amazon EMR which is native to AWS.
it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior BI and Reporting Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable."
"One of the valuable features about this solution is that it's managed services, so it's pretty stable, and scalable as much as you wish. It has all the necessary distributions. With some additional work, it's also possible to change to a Spark version with the latest version of EMR. It also has Hudi, so we are leveraging Apache Hudi on EMR for change data capture, so then it comes out-of-the-box in EMR."
"Amazon makes it about as easy as it can be to dip a toe in those waters."
"It's helped to automate processes."
"The solution is scalable."
"The stability of the product has been great overall."
"Less expensive than in-house hosting, much more scalable when needed to process larger volumes of data."
"It allows users to access the data through a web interface."
"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
 

Cons

"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."
"There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange."
"In Qubole, the interface was very good. I could see many details because in Amazon EMR console, very few details are available."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"The dashboard management could be better. Right now, it's lacking a bit."
"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."
"The initial setup was time-consuming, and deployment took approximately 30 minutes."
"Modules and strategies should be better handled and notified early in advance."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."
"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
6%
Healthcare Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?
I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.
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Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache, Cloudera, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Hadoop. Updated: March 2026.
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