No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon SageMaker vs Starburst Galaxy 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
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
AI Development Platforms (4th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
7th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Amazon SageMaker is 3.3%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon SageMaker3.3%
Starburst Galaxy1.5%
Other95.2%
Data Science Platforms
 

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.
NK
Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies
Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery
Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I recommend SageMaker for ML projects if you need to build models from scratch."
"The most tool's valuable feature, in my experience, is hyperparameter tuning. It allows us to test different parameters for the same model in parallel, which helps us quickly identify the configuration that yields the highest accuracy. This parallel computing capability saves us a lot of time."
"The superb thing that SageMaker brings is that it wraps everything well. It's got the deployment, the whole framework."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SageMaker for me is the model deployment service."
"The product aggregates everything we need to build and deploy machine learning models in one place."
"I have contacted the solution's technical support, and they were really good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The return on investment varies by use case and offers significant value in revenue increases and cost saving capabilities, especially in real time fraud detection and targeted advertisements."
"The evolution from SageMaker Classic to SageMaker Studio, particularly the UI part of Studio, is commendable."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."
"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."
"I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources."
"Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to rethink the strategy for data and architect data differently; instead of having multiple data marts and siloed data marts, we have a unified vision, and that is how it is changing."
"Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
 

Cons

"Improvement is needed in the no-code and low-code capabilities of Amazon SageMaker."
"While integration is available, there are concerns about how secure this integration is, particularly when exposing data to SageMaker."
"In my opinion, one improvement for Amazon SageMaker would be to offer serverless GPUs. Currently, we incur costs on an hourly basis. It would be beneficial if the tool could provide pay-as-you-go pricing based on endpoints."
"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 are other better solutions for large data, such as Databricks."
"The documentation must be made clearer and more user-friendly."
"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."
"Creating notebook instances for multiple users is pretty expensive in Amazon SageMaker."
"As a hosted option, I wish I had more control over the cluster configuration, specifically regarding some of the more advanced options."
"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."
"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The support costs are 10% of the Amazon fees and it comes by default."
"In terms of pricing, I'd also rate it ten out of ten because it's been beneficial compared to other solutions."
"Amazon SageMaker is a very expensive product."
"There is no license required for the solution since you can use it on demand."
"Databricks solution is less costly than Amazon SageMaker."
"The pricing is comparable."
"I rate the pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is the lowest price, and ten is the highest price. The solution is priced reasonably. There is no additional cost to be paid in excess of the standard licensing fees."
"The cost offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model. It depends on the instance that you do."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Science Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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 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 needs improvement with Amazon SageMaker?
It takes some work. We need to refer to the documentation. The documentation is good regarding what other providers we are able to connect with. Out of five, I can say 3.5.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose. We rely on third-party tools for ingesti...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is querying petabytes of data across vast data sources, and I use a federated query engine to join data sources from different databases and then join them usi...
 

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. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.