AWS Lake Formation vs Apache Hadoop comparison

Apache and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Additionally, 89% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

Apache Hadoop

Read 41 Apache Hadoop reviews

2,310 Views
1,409 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Read 21 AWS Lake Formation reviews

1,610 Views
1,385 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Apache Hadoop

AWS Lake Formation

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS Lake Formation and Apache Hadoop based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Data Warehouse solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Apache Hadoop Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Apache Hadoop

March 2026

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Helped 884,933 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (7th)

AWS Lake Formation

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (8th)

Featured Reviews

Nick Rapoport

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.

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Ciro Baldim Guerra

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"With the increase in data size for the business, this horizontal scalable appliance has answered every business question in terms of storage and processing."

"The ability to add multiple nodes without any restriction is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"What comes with the standard setup is what we mostly use, but Ambari is the most important."

"This intermediate step not only mashes data in the form that we want through data Cube slicing, but also helps us save states as snapshots for multiple time frames."

"One valuable feature is that we can download data."

"Initially, with RDBMS alone, we had a lot of work and few servers running on-premise and on cloud for the PoC and incubation. With the use of Hadoop and ecosystem components and tools, and managing it in Amazon EC2, we have created a Big Data "lab" which helps us to centralize all our work and solutions into a single repository. This has cut down the time in terms of maintenance, development and, especially, data processing challenges."

More Apache Hadoop pros

"We have observed measurable benefits in terms of cost savings, time savings, resource savings, and efficiency improvements in our workflows."

"The most important advantage of using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS."

"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."

"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

"There is no doubt that this place exceeded my expectations with its incredible ambiance, attentive service, and mouthwatering menu."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

Cons

"The upgrade path should be improved because it is not as easy as it should be."

"Since it is an open-source product, there won't be much support."

"The solution is very expensive."

"It requires a great deal of learning curve to understand."

"In the next release, I would like to see Hive more responsive for smaller queries and to reduce the latency."

"In general, stability can be a challenge."

"Real-time data processing is weak. This solution is very difficult to run and implement."

"We would like to have more dynamics in merging this machine data with other internal data to make more meaning out of it."

More Apache Hadoop cons

"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."

"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."

"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."

"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."

"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"You need to have data experience to use the product."

"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"We don't directly pay for it. Our clients pay for it, and they usually don't complain about the price. So, it is probably acceptable."

"It's reasonable, but there's room for improvement in cost-effectiveness."

"There are no licensing costs involved, hence money is saved on the software infrastructure."

"The price could be better. Hortonworks no longer exists, and Cloudera killed the free version of Hadoop."

"The price of Apache Hadoop could be less expensive."

"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."

More Apache Hadoop pricing and cost advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

Government

University

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	15

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

See all answers

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Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apache Hadoop

March 2026

Download Apache Hadoop product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

March 2026

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Overview

The Apache Hadoop project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-availability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly-available service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures.

Apache

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Apache Hadoop

March 2026

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. Apache Hadoop

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Apache Hadoop and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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