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

Apache Spark vs Spot comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 8, 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 Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Java Frameworks (2nd)
Spot
Ranking in Compute Service
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (28th), Server Virtualization Software (14th), Cloud Operations Analytics (3rd), Cloud Analytics (3rd), Containers as a Service (CaaS) (6th), Cloud Cost Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.3%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spot is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, able to expand, and handle large amounts of data well
We use batch processing. It works well with our formats and file versions. There's a lot of functionality. In our pipeline each hour, we make a copy of data from MongoDB, of the changes from MongoDB to some specific file. Each time pipeline copied all of the data, it would do it each time without changes to all of the tables. Tables have a lot of data, and in the last MongoDB version, there is a possibility to read only changed data. This reduced the cost and configuration of the cluster, and we saved about $150,000. The solution is scalable. It's a stable product.
Manpreet_Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Used to manage Kubernetes infrastructure, but it doesn't have support from OCI
Spot Ocean is deployed on the cloud in our organization. I would recommend the solution to other users. You need to have an experience with Kubernetes, or else this product is of no use. It is not difficult to learn to use Spot Ocean. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Spark, we parallelize our operations, efficiently accessing both historical and real-time data."
"I found the solution stable. We haven't had any problems with it."
"The distribution of tasks, like the seamless map-reduce functionality, is quite impressive."
"The product is useful for analytics."
"DataFrame: Spark SQL gives the leverage to create applications more easily and with less coding effort."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Spark is its memory processing because it processes data over RAM rather than disk, which is much more efficient and fast."
"Spark is used for transformations from large volumes of data, and it is usefully distributed."
"I like that it can handle multiple tasks parallelly. I also like the automation feature. JavaScript also helps with the parallel streaming of the library."
"The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow."
"The solution offers both block access and file access, making it a nice solution for customers."
 

Cons

"When you first start using this solution, it is common to run into memory errors when you are dealing with large amounts of data."
"Technical expertise from an engineer is required to deploy and run high-tech tools, like Informatica, on Apache Spark, making it an area where improvements are required to make the process easier for users."
"It requires overcoming a significant learning curve due to its robust and feature-rich nature."
"The solution must improve its performance."
"Apache Spark can improve the use case scenarios from the website. There is not any information on how you can use the solution across the relational databases toward multiple databases."
"Apache Spark is very difficult to use. It would require a data engineer. It is not available for every engineer today because they need to understand the different concepts of Spark, which is very, very difficult and it is not easy to learn."
"The initial setup was not easy."
"At the initial stage, the product provides no container logs to check the activity."
"There are no particular areas for improvement I can identify."
"The solution doesn't have support from OCI, and it should start working to onboard OCI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is an open-source product. If you're using the open-source Apache Spark, no fees are involved at any time. Charges only come into play when using it with other services like Databricks."
"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 not too cheap. You have to pay for hardware and Cloudera licenses. Of course, there is a solution with open source without Cloudera."
"It is an open-source platform. We do not pay for its subscription."
"I did not pay anything when using the tool on cloud services, but I had to pay on the compute side. The tool is not expensive compared with the benefits it offers. I rate the price as an eight out of ten."
"It is quite expensive. In fact, it accounts for almost 50% of the cost of our entire project."
"Considering the product version used in my company, I feel that the tool is not costly since the product is available for free."
"They provide an open-source license for the on-premise version."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Compute Service solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Compared to other solutions like Doc DB, Spark is more costly due to the need for extensive infrastructure. It requires significant investment in infrastructure, which can be expensive. While cloud...
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
The Spark solution could improve in scheduling tasks and managing dependencies. Spark alone cannot handle sequential tasks, requiring environments like Airflow scheduler or scripts. For instance, o...
What do you like most about Spot Ocean?
The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow.
What needs improvement with Spot Ocean?
There are no particular areas for improvement I can identify.
What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?
Spot by NetApp is primarily used for backup and also for Fiservware.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Spot Ocean, Spot Elastigroup, Spot Eco
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Freshworks, Zalando, Red Spark, News, Trax, ETAS, Demandbase, BeesWa, Duolingo, intel, IBM, N26, Wix, EyeEm, moovit, SAMSUNG, News UK, ticketmaster
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. Spot and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.