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AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon EMR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd)
AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.3%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.7%, up from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Lake Formation5.7%
Amazon EMR3.3%
Other91.0%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless data integration enhances reporting efficiency and an easy setup
Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources. The service charges are based on processing only, depending on the resources used, which can help save money. It is easy to integrate with other services for storage, allowing data to be shifted to cheaper storage based on usage.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance."
"Amazon EMR's most valuable features are processing speed and data storage capacity."
"The solution is pretty simple to set up."
"Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data."
"Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources."
"The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions."
"This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable."
"The solution is scalable."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."
"The most valuable features of AWS Lake Formation were the access model itself, as it allows implementation of filters, Blueprints, and row-level and column-level security to mask data that shouldn't be accessed by certain entities, enabling granular control without exposing PII data."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"The integration of AWS Lake Formation with the IAM for authentication and authorization is very good; I didn't have any problems in the setup and thought it was simple."
"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
 

Cons

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"The product's features for storing data in static clusters could be better."
"The initial setup was time-consuming."
"The solution can become expensive if you are not careful."
"As people are shifting from legacy solutions to other technologies, Amazon EMR needs to add more features that give more flexibility in managing user data."
"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."
"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."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."
"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."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Media Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EMR?
Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
Compared to others, Amazon seems efficient and is considered good for Big Data workloads. Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 ( /products/amazon-ec2-reviews ) instances...
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ) buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integrati...
What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?
It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
I don't know any features that I would want to see included in the future releases of AWS Lake Formation. Making queries in SQL is a reality now, and in the future, it would be beneficial if AWS im...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon EMR and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.