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Apache NiFi vs Apache Spark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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 NiFi
Ranking in Compute Service
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Apache NiFi is 9.3%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.9%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Spark11.9%
Apache NiFi9.3%
Other78.8%
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Bharghava Raghavendra Beesa - PeerSpot reviewer
The tool enables effective data transformation and integration
There are some areas for improvement, particularly with record-level tasks that take a bit of time. The quality of JSON data processing could be improved, as JSON workloads require manual conversions without a specific process. Enhancing features related to alerting would be helpful, including mobile alerts for pipeline issues. Integration with mobile devices for error alerts would simplify information delivery.
Omar Khaled - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowering data consolidation and fast decision-making with efficient big data processing
I can improve the organization's functions by taking less time to make decisions. To make the right decision, you need the right data, and a solution can provide this by hiring talent and employees who can consolidate data from different sources and organize it. Not all solutions can make this data fast enough to be used, except for solutions such as Apache Spark Structured Streaming. To make the right decision, you should have both accurate and fast data. Apache Spark itself is similar to the Python programming language. Python is a language with many libraries for mathematics and machine learning. Apache Spark is the solution, and within it, you have PySpark, which is the API for Apache Spark to write and run Python code. Within it, there are many APIs, including SQL APIs, allowing you to write SQL code within a Python function in Apache Spark. You can also use Apache Spark Structured Streaming and machine learning APIs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Apache NiFi is user-friendly. Its most valuable features for handling large volumes of data include its multitude of integrated endpoints and clients and the ability to create cron jobs to run tasks at regular intervals."
"Visually, this is a good product."
"It is highly effective for handling real-time data by working with APIs for immediate and continuous data extraction."
"The user interface is good and makes it easy to design very popular workflows."
"We can integrate the tool with other applications easily."
"The most valuable features of this solution are ease of use and implementation."
"The most valuable feature has been the range of clients and the range of connectors that we could use."
"The initial setup is very easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, where one point is difficult, and ten points are easy."
"The most crucial feature for us is the streaming capability. It serves as a fundamental aspect that allows us to exert control over our operations."
"Spark can handle small to huge data and is suitable for any size of company."
"Now, when we're tackling sentiment analysis using NLP technologies, we deal with unstructured data—customer chats, feedback on promotions or demos, and even media like images, audio, and video files. For processing such data, we rely on PySpark. Beneath the surface, Spark functions as a compute engine with in-memory processing capabilities, enhancing performance through features like broadcasting and caching. It's become a crucial tool, widely adopted by 90% of companies for a decade or more."
"We use it for ETL purposes as well as for implementing the full transformation pipelines."
"The fault tolerant feature is provided."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its capacity for processing large amounts of data."
"One of the key features is that Apache Spark is a distributed computing framework. You can help multiple slaves and distribute the workload between them."
"The deployment of the product is easy."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in integration with SSO. For example, NiFi does not have any integration with SSO. And if I want to give some kind of rollback access control across the organization. That is not possible."
"The tool should incorporate more tutorials for advanced use cases. It has tutorials for simple use cases."
"There should be a better way to integrate a development environment with local tools."
"There are some claims that NiFi is cloud-native but we have tested it, and it's not."
"We run many jobs, and there are already large tables. When we do not control NiFi on time, all reports fail for the day. So it's pretty slow to control, and it has to be improved."
"The quality of JSON data processing could be improved, as JSON workloads require manual conversions without a specific process."
"The use case templates could be more precise to typical business needs."
"The overall stability of this solution could be improved. In a future release, we would like to have access to more features that could be used in a parallel way. This would provide more freedom with processing."
"The graphical user interface (UI) could be a bit more clear. It's very hard to figure out the execution logs and understand how long it takes to send everything. If an execution is lost, it's not so easy to understand why or where it went. I have to manually drill down on the data processes which takes a lot of time. Maybe there could be like a metrics monitor, or maybe the whole log analysis could be improved to make it easier to understand and navigate."
"They could improve the issues related to programming language for the platform."
"More ML based algorithms should be added to it, to make it algorithmic-rich for developers."
"The solution needs to optimize shuffling between workers."
"Apache Spark's GUI and scalability could be improved."
"At the initial stage, the product provides no container logs to check the activity."
"The basic improvement would be to have integration with these solutions."
"It would be beneficial to enhance Spark's capabilities by incorporating models that utilize features not traditionally present in its framework."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."
"We use the free version of Apache NiFi."
"I used the tool's free version."
"The solution is open-source."
"We are using the free version of the solution."
"Apache Spark is not too cheap. You have to pay for hardware and Cloudera licenses. Of course, there is a solution with open source without Cloudera."
"Since we are using the Apache Spark version, not the data bricks version, it is an Apache license version, the support and resolution of the bug are actually late or delayed. The Apache license is free."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
"It is quite expensive. In fact, it accounts for almost 50% of the cost of our entire project."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"The solution is affordable and there are no additional licensing costs."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache NiFi?
Apache NiFi is open-source and free. Its integration with systems like Cloudera can be expensive, but Apache NiFi itself presents the best pricing as a standalone tool.
What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?
The logging system of Apache NiFi needs improvement. It is difficult to debug compared to Airflow ( /products/apache-airflow-reviews ), where task details and issues are clear. With Apache NiFi, I ...
What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
Regarding Apache Spark, I have only used Apache Spark Structured Streaming, not the machine learning components. I am uncertain about specific improvements needed today. However, after five years, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Macquarie Telecom Group, Dovestech, Slovak Telekom, Looker, Hastings Group
NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache NiFi vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.