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Amazon EMR vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.8
Amazon EMR offers cost savings and ROI benefits, with some users experiencing up to 20% cost reduction and high returns.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers cost savings, simplified management, and flexible serverless options, enhancing overall returns and efficiency.
Some of my customers have indeed seen a return on investment with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics as they used it for analytics to drive decision-making, improving their processes or increasing revenue.
Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at Strategic Architects
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon EMR customer service varies, with generally responsive support despite reported delays and occasional gaps in integration assistance.
Sentiment score
6.6
Opinions on Azure Synapse Analytics support vary, with mixed feedback on responsiveness, expertise, and communication, yet documentation is praised.
They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
We get all call support, screen sharing support, and immediate support, so there are no problems.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support from Amazon as ten out of ten.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
They are slow to respond and not very knowledgeable.
IT Manager at KONGSBERG
This is an underestimation of the real impact because we use big data also to monitor the network and the customer.
Director Information Technology Services at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the support for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics as an eight out of ten.
Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at Strategic Architects
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon EMR efficiently scales for businesses, offering customizable cluster options to manage diverse data sizes and enterprise demands.
Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is praised for seamless scalability and adaptability, despite some complex data challenges, across industries.
Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is scalable, offering numerous opportunities for scalability.
IT Manager at KONGSBERG
For the scalability of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, I would rate it a 10 until you remain in the Azure Cloud scalability framework.
Director Information Technology Services at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Recovering from such scenarios becomes a bit problematic or time-consuming.
Sr. Technical Architect at Hexaware Technologies Limited
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR is praised for stability and reliability, with high ratings due to its configurability and robust features.
Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is praised for stability and performance, with users rating it highly despite minor glitches.
Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Performance and stability are absolutely fine because Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a PaaS service.
CTO at New Turn Technologies
I find the service stable as I have not encountered many issues.
IT Manager at KONGSBERG
We have never integrated Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics with Databricks, but we have mostly pulled data from on-premises systems into Azure Databricks.
Practice Head BI at Nous Infosystems
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR users face challenges with customization, stability, onboarding, cost optimization, task speed, and demand enhanced integration and security.
Users want improved Azure Synapse integration, ease of use, scalability, documentation, security, IoT support, and better monitoring.
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.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an excellent product because it includes both SIEM and orchestration capabilities with playbooks.
CTO at New Turn Technologies
There is a need for better documentation, particularly for customized tasks with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.
IT Manager at KONGSBERG
Databricks is a very rich solution, with numerous open sources and capabilities in terms of extract, transform, load, database query, and so forth.
Director Information Technology Services at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR pricing is variable, potentially costly, but users can manage expenses with strategic resource and instance management.
Azure Synapse Analytics offers variable pricing, starting from €1,000, influenced by usage, compute power, and storage consumption.
Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 instances, instance sizes, Kubernetes, Docker services, storage, and data transfers.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The cheapest tier costs about $4,000 to $4,700 a year, while the most expensive tier can reach up to $300,000 a year.
Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at Strategic Architects
I think the price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very expensive, but that's not only for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics—it's for the cloud in general.
Director Information Technology Services at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
I find the pricing of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reasonable.
Sr. Technical Architect at Hexaware Technologies Limited
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EMR offers scalable, cost-effective big data management with integration, flexibility, security, and seamless Hadoop and Spark processing.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers scalable data processing, seamless integration, and cost-efficient analytics in a user-friendly environment.
Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.
Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs
Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop.
Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The features at Amazon EMR that I have found most valuable are fully customizable functions.
Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
One of the most valuable features in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the ability to write your own ETL code using Azure Data Factory, which is a component within Synapse.
Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at Strategic Architects
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers significant visibility, which helps us understand our usage more clearly.
IT Manager at KONGSBERG
For Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, the integration is the most valuable feature, meaning that whatever you need is fast and easy to use.
Director Information Technology Services at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (4th)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.3%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics6.3%
Amazon EMR3.4%
Other90.3%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

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.
AnandTiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at New Turn Technologies
Has consistently supported integration across diverse environments and streamlined deployment processes
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve their pricing structure. They currently have two separate pricing tiers: full log and partial log. I suggest they implement a single price and reduce charges on logs. They could implement a cap with some free tier or price tier based on the GBs of log collected. This would help customers use Azure more effectively. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an excellent product because it includes both SIEM and orchestration capabilities with playbooks, but the log management part is very costly. Regarding future improvements, I would appreciate more application connectors for integration, particularly for on-premise based solutions. Many customers still maintain on-premise infrastructure, so having more integration possibilities for these environments would be beneficial.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

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?
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 h...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?
I am working on Amazon EMR but not extensively. Basically, our work is data transformation. Our pipelines work on that exclusively. We have Spark applications, and earlier, we used Amazon EMR exten...
How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.