Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Apache Spark Streaming vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Spark Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Spark Streaming is 3.6%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 12.5%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks12.5%
Apache Spark Streaming3.6%
Other83.9%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Himansu Jena - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient real-time data management and analysis with advanced features
There are various ways we can improve Apache Spark Streaming through best practices. The initial part requires attention to batch interval tuning, which helps small intervals in micro batches based on latency requirements and helps prevent back pressure. We can use data formats such as Parquet or ORC for storage that needs faster reads and leveraging feature predicate push-down optimizations. We can implement serialization which helps with any Kyro in terms of .NET or Java. We have boxing and unboxing serialization for XML and JSON for converting key-pair values stored in browser. We can also implement caching mechanisms for storing and recomputing multiple operations. We can use specified joins which help with smaller databases, and distributed joins can minimize users. We can implement project optimization memory for CPU efficiency, known as Tungsten. Additionally, load balancing, checkpointing, and schema evaluation are areas to consider based on performance and bottlenecks. We can use Bugzilla tools for tracking and Splunk to monitor the performance of process systems, utilization, and performance based on data frames or data sets.
ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows."
"The platform’s most valuable feature for processing real-time data is its ability to handle continuous data streams."
"Spark Streaming is critical, quite stable, full-featured, and scalable."
"The solution is very stable and reliable."
"The main benefits of Apache Spark Streaming include cost savings, time savings, and efficiency improvements about data storage."
"Apache Spark Streaming was straightforward in terms of maintenance. It was actively developed, and migrating from an older to a newer version was quite simple."
"With Apache Spark Streaming's integration with Anaconda and Miniconda with Python, I interact with databases using data frames or data sets in micro versions and create solutions based on business expectations for decision-making, logistic regression, linear regression, or machine learning which provides image or voice record and graphical data for improved accuracy."
"By integrating Apache Spark Streaming, the data freshness rate, and latency have significantly improved from 24-hour batch processing to less than one minute, facilitating faster communication to downstream systems, aiding marketing campaigns."
"The most valuable feature of Databricks is the notebook, data factory, and ease of use."
"Databricks has improved my organization by allowing us to transform data from sources to a different format and feed that to the analytics, business intelligence, and reporting teams. This tool makes it easy to do those kinds of things."
"A very valuable feature is the data processing, and the solution is specifically good at using the Spark ecosystem."
"It helps integrate data science and machine learning capabilities."
"Databricks is a unified solution that we can use for streaming. It is supporting open source languages, which are cloud-agnostic. When I do database coding if any other tool has a similar language pack to Excel or SQL, I can use the same knowledge, limiting the need to learn new things. It supports a lot of Python libraries where I can use some very easily."
"Databricks helps crunch petabytes of data in a very short period of time."
"I like that Databricks is a unified platform that lets you do streaming and batch processing in the same place. You can do analytics, too. They have added something called Databricks SQL Analytics, allowing users to connect to the data lake to perform analytics. Databricks also will enable you to share your data securely. It integrates with your reporting system as well."
"Databricks covers end-to-end data analytics workflow in one platform, this is the best feature of the solution."
 

Cons

"One improvement I would expect is real-time processing instead of micro-batch or near real-time."
"Integrating event-level streaming capabilities could be beneficial."
"When dealing with various data types including COBOL, Excel, JSON, video, audio, and MPG files, challenges can arise with incomplete or missing values."
"The service structure of Apache Spark Streaming can improve. There are a lot of issues with memory management and latency. There is no real-time analytics. We recommend it for the use cases where there is a five-second latency, but not for a millisecond, an IOT-based, or the detection anomaly-based. Flink as a service is much better."
"It was resource-intensive, even for small-scale applications."
"There could be an improvement in the area of the user configuration section, it should be less developer-focused and more business user-focused."
"When dealing with various data types including COBOL, Excel, JSON, video, audio, and MPG files, challenges can arise with incomplete or missing values."
"The initial setup is quite complex."
"Instead of relying on a massive instance, the solution should offer micro partition levels. They're working on it, however, they need to implement it to help the solution run more effectively."
"It would be better if it were faster. It can be slow, and it can be super fast for big data. But for small data, sometimes there is a sub-second response, which can be considered slow. In the next release, I would like to have automatic creation of APIs because they don't have it at the moment, and I spend a lot of time building them."
"Databricks may not be as easy to use as other tools, but if you simplify a tool too much, it won't have the flexibility to go in-depth. Databricks is completely in the programmer's hands. I prefer flexibility rather than simplicity."
"Anyone who doesn't know SQL may find the product difficult to work with."
"I would like more integration with SQL for using data in different workspaces."
"There should be better integration with other platforms."
"I would like to see more documentation in terms of how an end-user could use it, and users like me can easily try it and implement use cases."
"We'd like a more visual dashboard for analysis It needs better UI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I was using the open-source community version, which was self-hosted."
"People pay for Apache Spark Streaming as a service."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, or not cost-effective, and ten is cheap, I rate the price a seven."
"Spark is an affordable solution, especially considering its open-source nature."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"The product pricing is moderate."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Streaming Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Healthcare Company
6%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Spark Streaming?
Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark Streaming?
I believe the downsides of Apache Spark Streaming are that it primarily supports structured data. Currently, in my organization, we require thousands of transcripts that need to be handled during l...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark Streaming?
My use cases for Apache Spark Streaming were during my academics. During that time, I used Apache Spark Streaming to transmit data live from one source to another.
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
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...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
 

Also Known As

Spark Streaming
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, eBay Inc.
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark Streaming vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.