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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
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
AI Development Platforms (4th)
Azure Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
Create innovative assistants with seamless data integration for large-scale projects
The various integration options available in Amazon SageMaker, such as Firehose for connecting to data pipelines, are simple to use. Tools like AWS Glue integrate well for data transformations. The Databricks integration aids data scientists and engineers. SageMaker is fully managed, offers high availability, flexibility with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and MXNet, and comes with pre-trained algorithms for forecasting, anomaly detection, and more.
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 solution's ability to improve work at my organization stems from the ensemble model and a combination of various models it provides."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SageMaker is that you don't have to do any programming in order to perform some of your use cases."
"The feature I found most valuable is the data catalog, as it assists with the lineage of data through the preparation pipeline."
"The few projects we have done have been promising."
"I recommend SageMaker for ML projects if you need to build models from scratch."
"The intuitive interface and streamlined user experience make it easy to navigate and set up various tools like Visual Studio Code or Jupyter Notebook."
"The most valuable features in Amazon SageMaker are its AutoML, feature store, and automated hyperparameter tuning capabilities."
"One of the most valuable features of Amazon SageMaker for me is the one-touch deployment, which simplifies the process greatly."
"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 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

"There is room for improvement in the collaboration with serverless architecture, particularly integration with AWS Lambda."
"In general, improvements are needed on the performance side of the product's graphical user interface-related area since it consumes a lot of time for a user."
"Amazon SageMaker can make it simpler to manage the data flow from start to finish, such as by integrating data, usingthe machine, and deploying models. This process could be more user-friendly compared to other tools. I would also like to improve integration with Bedrock and the LLM connection for AWS."
"While integration is available, there are concerns about how secure this integration is, particularly when exposing data to SageMaker."
"The model repository is a concern as models are stored on a bucket and there's an issue with versioning."
"Amazon might need to emphasize its capabilities in generative models more effectively."
"The product must provide better documentation."
"Having all documentation easily accessible on the front page of SageMaker would be a great improvement."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The support costs are 10% of the Amazon fees and it comes by default."
"Amazon SageMaker is a very expensive product."
"SageMaker is worth the money for our use case."
"The product is expensive."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"The pricing is comparable."
"The cost offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model. It depends on the instance that you do."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
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 Business12
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?
Overall, my experience has been positive with Azure Databricks; they have many features, but there is no use case for me to use those features, such as Delta Live Tables and Genie. In my opinion, I...
What is your primary use case for Azure Databricks?
The primary use cases for me are the reportings I have to do, so I need to ingest data from the file and create reports. I do not utilize it for real-time data processing. I have not integrated Azu...
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SageMaker vs. Azure Databricks and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.