Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon Kinesis vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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
7.8
Amazon Kinesis offers significant cost savings, seamless integration, improved monitoring, and reduces data ingestion costs, enhancing ROI and architecture.
Sentiment score
6.5
Databricks efficiently lowers costs with cloud services, though ROI varies by sector and integration, particularly with Azure.
With Lambda, there is no need for data transfer charges, which is beneficial for less frequent workloads.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon Kinesis customer support is generally quick and effective, but experiences vary in technical guidance and response times.
Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks support is praised for prompt, professional service, comprehensive resources, and effective communication, enhancing overall user satisfaction.
We receive prompt support from AWS solution architects or TAMs.
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
I rate the technical support as fine because they have levels of technical support available, especially partners who get really good support from Databricks on new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon Kinesis is scalable for reliable streaming, but complex processing and costs may vary with implementation and data volumes.
Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for its scalability, enabling easy adaptation to large data and user loads with efficient resource management.
Amazon Kinesis provides auto-scaling with streams that handle large volumes well.
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
I would rate the scalability of this solution as very high, about nine out of ten.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon Kinesis is praised for stability and fault tolerance, though some users report slowdowns and capacity issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is stable and robust, with minor issues, handling large data volumes and earning high stability ratings.
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Kinesis requires improvements in throughput, automation, setup complexity, data retention, machine learning features, and user-friendly interfaces.
Databricks requires visualization improvements, pricing clarity, user-friendliness, expanded integrations, and simplification for non-technical users to enhance usability.
Amazon Kinesis could improve its pricing to be more competitive, especially for large volumes.
We could use their job clusters, however, that increases costs, which is challenging for us as a startup.
This feature, if made publicly available, may act as a game-changer, considering many global organizations use SAP data for their ERP requirements.
If I could right-click to copy absolute paths or to read files directly into a data frame, it would standardize and simplify the process.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Kinesis is cost-effective compared to self-managed solutions, but prices can increase with high data usage and features.
Enterprise buyers view Databricks as moderately pricey, with high setup costs, though discounts and licensing flexibility are available.
Amazon Kinesis and Lambda pricing is competitive, but we noticed that scaling and large volumes could potentially increase costs significantly.
It is not a cheap solution.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Kinesis offers easy configuration, real-time analytics, and robust AWS integration, ideal for managing large, complex data workflows.
Databricks excels in scalability, integration, and user-friendly features, making it ideal for data processing and AI across industries.
Lambda's scalability, seamless integration with other AWS services, and support for multiple programming languages are very beneficial.
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Kinesis
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon Kinesis is 7.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 13.1%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks13.1%
Amazon Kinesis7.1%
Other79.8%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Rajni Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for media streaming and live-streaming data
It is not compulsory to use Amazon Kinesis. If you don't want to use the data streaming, you can use just the Kinesis data firehose. Using the Kinesis data firehose is compulsory because we can't store all chats and recordings in Amazon S3 without it. When a call comes in the Amazon Kinesis instance, it will go to Data Streams if we use it. Otherwise, it will go to the Kinesis data firehose, where we need to define the S3 bucket path, and it will go to Amazon S3. So, without the Kinesis data firehose, we can't store all the chats and recordings in Amazon S3. Using Amazon Kinesis totally depends upon the user's requirements. If you want to use live streaming for the data lake or data analyst team, you need to use Amazon Kinesis. If you don't want to use it, you can directly use the Kinesis data firehose, which will be stored in Amazon S3. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Streaming Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Kinesis?
Amazon Kinesis's main purpose is to provide near real-time data streaming at a consistent 2Mbps rate, which is really impressive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Kinesis?
Amazon Kinesis and Lambda pricing is competitive, but we noticed that scaling and large volumes could potentially increase costs significantly.
What needs improvement with Amazon Kinesis?
Amazon Kinesis could improve its pricing to be more competitive, especially for large volumes. Also, the KCL library's documentation could be improved to better explain the configuration parameters...
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Kinesis, AWS Kinesis, Kinesis
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Zillow, Netflix, Sonos
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Kinesis vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.