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

AWS Lake Formation vs Apache Hadoop 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

Apache Hadoop
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (9th)
AWS Lake Formation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

NR
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Reliable performance maintained but requires ongoing management and support
Hadoop was used for years, but there were problems since the people who originally set it up left the firm. The group that owned it later didn't have the technical resources to properly maintain it. Although there was nothing wrong with Hadoop itself, issues arose without proper management and upgrades.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scalability of Apache Hadoop is very good."
"The most valuable features are the ability to process the machine data at a high speed, and to add structure to our data so that we can generate relevant analytics."
"The performance is pretty good."
"It's open-source, so it's very cost-effective."
"Since both Apache Hadoop and Amazon EC2 are elastic in nature, we can scale and expand on demand for a specific PoC, and scale down when it's done."
"Hadoop is extensible — it's elastic."
"Hadoop is extensible — it's elastic."
"The most valuable feature is scalability and the possibility to work with major information and open source capability."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"The most important advantage of using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"The main benefits that I have seen from using AWS Lake Formation are related to FinOps because you have control of your data and can track your costs since AWS Lake Formation is integrated into a unique platform, which is AWS Cloud Service."
"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."
"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"The features and capabilities of AWS Lake Formation that I have found most valuable are that it is really convenient to see all the different data assets that were configured and understand who has and what type of service has or does not have access to those services."
 

Cons

"The solution is very expensive."
"Hadoop in and of itself stores data with 3x redundancy and our organization has come to the conclusion that the default 3x results in too much wasted disk space."
"Based on our needs, we would like to see a tool for data visualization and enhanced Ambari for management, plus a pre-built IoT hub/model."
"We have plans to increase usage and this is where we've realized that when we have all these clusters and we're running queries and analyzing, we are facing some latency issues."
"I mentioned it definitely, and this is probably the only feature we can improve a little bit because the terminal and coding screen on Hadoop is a little outdated, and it looks like the old C++ bio screen. If the UI and UX can be improved slightly, I believe it will go a long way toward increasing adoption and effectiveness."
"There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the product's technical support part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"General installation/dependency issues were there, but were not a major, complex issue. While migrating data from MySQL to Hive, things are a little challenging, but we were able to get through that with support from forums and a little trial and error."
"It's good for what is meant to do, a lot of big data, but it's not as good for low latency applications."
"You need to have data experience to use the product."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."
"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."
"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."
"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."
"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Do take into consider that data storage and compute capacity scale differently and hence purchasing a "boxed" / 'all-in-one" solution (software and hardware) might not be the best idea."
"This is a low cost and powerful solution."
"We just use the free version."
"​There are no licensing costs involved, hence money is saved on the software infrastructure​."
"For any big enterprise the costs can be handled, and it is suitable for big enterprises because the scale of data is large. For medium and small enterprises, the tool is on the high-price side."
"The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level."
"The price could be better. Hortonworks no longer exists, and Cloudera killed the free version of Hadoop."
"If my company can use the cloud version of Apache Hadoop, particularly the cloud storage feature, it would be easier and would cost less because an on-premises deployment has a higher cost during storage, for example, though I don't know exactly how much Apache Hadoop costs."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
University
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Hadoop?
It's primarily open source. You can handle huge data volumes and create your own views, workflows, and tables. I can also use it for real-time data streaming.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Hadoop?
The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level. While it might be free for students, organizations typically need to pay for their subscriptions. Th...
What needs improvement with Apache Hadoop?
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it. This wa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Adobe, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hulu, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, AOL, Twitter, University of Maryland, Yahoo!, Cornell University Web Lab
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Apache Hadoop and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.