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Amazon SageMaker vs Azure Databricks 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 SageMaker
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
AI Development Platforms (4th)
Azure Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

NeerajPokala - PeerSpot reviewer
Machine Learning Engineer at Macquarie Group
Automation has transformed document review and reduces manual effort in financial workflows
There will be many features in Amazon SageMaker itself, but we don't know whether the feature is there or not, particularly the documentation part. Whatever the new releases will be, they will not post very fast. It is very easy to deploy Amazon SageMaker. The documentation is also very good. It is good because we are able to collaborate with our notebooks. At a time we can develop simultaneously and work on different use cases in the same notebook itself.
VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai
Unified data platform has supported real-time analytics and advanced machine learning workflows
The real-time processing with Azure Databricks is supported through integration from external systems, for which we have to go with tools such as Matillion's HVR or Kafka. I have experience using HVR, high-volume replication. You get real-time data replicated into Azure Databricks using these tools. When looking for performance metrics in Azure Databricks, it depends on the processing. It can process millions of records quickly, and it is driven by the Spark framework, which is pretty strong in terms of framework perspective. The columnar database is another strong feature which helps enhance its performance. Prior to the introduction of Unity Catalog, there was no metadata capability in Azure Databricks. It was very simplistic, but now with the Unity Catalog introduction and Delta Sharing capabilities, Azure Databricks is at the top-notch at this point in time. In comparison, SAP BW is a little bit more mature because apart from RBAC, it gives data-level authorization, which is a little bit not that great in Azure Databricks at this point in time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the ability to store artifacts and gather reports and measures from experiments."
"Allows you to create API endpoints."
"I have contacted the solution's technical support, and they were really good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The tool has made client management easier where patients need to upload their health records and we can use the tool to understand details on treatment date, amount, etc."
"I recommend SageMaker for ML projects if you need to build models from scratch."
"SageMaker has provided everything."
"The support is very good with well-trained engineers whose training curriculum is rigorous."
"Amazon SageMaker is highly valuable for managing ML workloads. It connects to AWS cloud resources, making it easy to deploy algorithms and collaborate using tools like GitLab. It offers a wide range of Python libraries and other necessary tools for modelling and algorithms."
"Azure Databricks gives the capability to handle a lot of big data use cases and machine learning use cases, but machine learning use cases need quite a lot of compute power, and that is where the cost spikes up."
"Regarding the learning curve, it is a good technology; it is the first time I am working on a cloud platform, and before that, I have not worked on any data engineering tool that is on cloud, so it is good learning."
"The concept of Azure Databricks is a very good one, especially for the data products concept and idea."
"The best features in Azure Databricks for me are that it's easy to use, flexible, and has fast processing, and you can use multiple data types."
 

Cons

"While integration is available, there are concerns about how secure this integration is, particularly when exposing data to SageMaker."
"The pricing of the solution is an issue...In SageMaker, monitoring could be improved by supporting more data types other than JSON and CSV."
"One area for improvement is the pricing, which can be quite high."
"Scalability to handle big data can be improved by making integration with networks such as Hadoop and Apache Spark easier."
"AI is a new area and AWS needs to have an internship training program available."
"One area where Amazon SageMaker could improve is its pricing. The high costs can drive companies to explore other cloud options. Additionally, while generally good, the updates sometimes come with bugs, and the documentation could be much better. More examples and clearer guidance would be helpful."
"There is room for improvement in the collaboration with serverless architecture, particularly integration with AWS Lambda."
"One area for improvement is the pricing, which can be quite high."
"At this point, I cannot comment on the cost being ideal; it is on the higher side, but in the cloud-based environment, compared to on-premise, it could be far lesser in cost."
"I have given the product a rating of six out of ten just because I do not use all of the functionalities, and I see some direction for improvement as well; also, every product has something to improve, and I have not used many features in this product."
"The only concern is perhaps related to the pricing and cost that Azure Databricks incurs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is comparable."
"The product is expensive."
"In terms of pricing, I'd also rate it ten out of ten because it's been beneficial compared to other solutions."
"On average, customers pay about $300,000 USD per month."
"SageMaker is worth the money for our use case."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"You don't pay for Sagemaker. You only pay for the compute instances in your storage."
"The pricing is complicated as it is based on what kind of machines you are using, the type of storage, and the kind of computation."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Amazon SageMaker?
We've had experience with unique ML projects using SageMaker. For example, we're developing a platform similar to ChatGPT that requires models. We utilize Amazon SageMaker to create endpoints for t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon SageMaker?
If you manage it effectively, their pricing is reasonable. It's similar to anything in the cloud; if you don't manage it properly, it can be expensive, but if you do, it's fine.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Databricks?
Regarding the licensing cost of Azure Databricks, it has evolved quite a lot. The compute is the biggest cost, as with any other big data solutions. The storage cost is almost minimal or negligible...
What needs improvement with Azure Databricks?
My team handles those specific tasks, and I know that they are doing well with that. The only concern is perhaps related to the pricing and cost that Azure Databricks incurs.
What is your primary use case for Azure Databricks?
I think this is related to our internal business, as we have a data warehouse and data lakes that we use Azure Databricks for. We work for Bosch, and we have the solution internally. We purchase ev...
 

Also Known As

AWS SageMaker, SageMaker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DigitalGlobe, Thomson Reuters Center for AI and Cognitive Computing, Hotels.com, GE Healthcare, Tinder, Intuit
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SageMaker vs. Azure Databricks and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.