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AWS AppSync vs AWS Glue comparison

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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

AWS AppSync
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Glue
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS AppSync is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Glue is 7.4%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Glue7.4%
AWS AppSync1.2%
Other91.4%
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Akil Saji - PeerSpot reviewer
AWS Cloud Developer at Mobil80 Solutions and Services Pvt. Ltd.
Ease of creating APIs with ongoing updates needed for automation
AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs. The ease of use is a main advantage, allowing even beginners to start from scratch and learn through AppSync. Before AWS, developing and managing APIs was quite complex. AWS provided AppSync, which assists developers and startup founders. Startups blooming everywhere benefit from this service, welcoming those who lack prior knowledge. When working on AWS, I notice that Amazon regularly implements new features. For instance, with the Lambda service, AWS is transitioning from an old editor to a new one. Similarly, AppSync frequently introduces updates and changes. This trend is making the user interface more accessible, even for individuals without a technical background. Additionally, the cost is attractive, as AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. These factors make AppSync both easy to use and cost-effective.
NS
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution improves ETL performance but faces challenges with version upgrades
For ETL, I feel the performance is excellent. If I create jobs in a standard way, the performance is great, and maintenance is also seamless. It is serverless, so I do not need to worry about other integrations. It runs on a serverless VM. Glue services from AWS are regularly upgraded with new properties and functions. We use PySpark and other frameworks, which help customize our ETL process in a standard way. During our process, we utilized the typical SQL ITIL process standard in Glue-oriented ETL services, which helped us improve performance and time. AWS running time, mostly during the morning, saved us time compared to the old ETL method. There are many email notifications once a job is successful or fails, and we get notifications using SES or AWS's Simple Notification Service. Glue is integrated with both email alerts, and we are responsible for managing the full data journey from end to end.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"Support for multiple data sources and formats is a fantastic feature."
"AWS Glue's most valuable features are the data catalog, including crawlers and tables, and Glue Studio, which means you don't have to use custom code."
"The facility to integrate with S3 and the possibility to use Jupyter Notebook inside the pipeline are the most valuable features."
"I also like that you can add custom libraries like JAR files and use them. So, the ability to use a fast processing engine and embed basic jobs easily are significant advantages."
"I like that it's flexible, powerful, and allows you to write your own queries and scripts to get the needed transformations."
"Glue is a NoSQL-based data ETL tool that has some advantages over IIS and ISAs."
"The solution helps organizations gain flexibility in defining the structure of the data."
"I appreciate AWS Glue for its cost-effectiveness."
"I like its integration and ability to handle all data-related tasks."
 

Cons

"Moving to other clouds is impossible without significantly rearchitecting your applications."
"In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial."
"It is very difficult to learn the tool and remember the syntaxes comparatively."
"Overall, I consider the technical support to be fine, although the response time could be faster in certain cases."
"There should be more connectors for different databases."
"I would like to see a more robust interface on the no-code side. This would be nice to be able to split cells."
"One area that could be improved is the ETL view. The drag-and-drop interface is not as user-friendly as some other ETL tools."
"AWS Glue's error handling is difficult."
"On occasion, the solution's dashboard reports that a project failed due to runtime but it actually succeeded."
"It is quite clunky and code-heavy, which is my biggest problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, and it is a pay-as-you-go model."
"It is not expensive. AWS Glue works on the serverless architecture. We get charged for the time the server is up. For our use case, we have to use it once in a day, and it is not expensive for us."
"Technical support is a paid service, and which subscription you have is dependent on that. You must pay one of them, and it ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per year."
"I rate the product's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"AWS Glue uses a pay-as-you-go approach which is helpful. The price of the overall solution is low and is a great advantage."
"AWS Glue follows a pay-as-you-go model, wherein the cost of the data you use will be counted as a monthly bill."
"The pricing is a bit higher than other solutions like Athena and EC2. If the pricing becomes more scaled or flexible, it will be good because you have to pay 44 cents just for one DPU for an hour. If you increase DPUs to 5 or 10, the pricing gets multiplied. There are also some time limits like 0 to 10 minutes or 10 to 20 minutes. If the pricing is according to the minutes, it would be better because you have to limit your job to 10 minutes or 20 minutes."
"I would rate the solution a six or seven on a scale of one to ten, with ten being very expensive. Specifically, I rate its pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
22%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Healthcare Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS AppSync?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good and easy. About the pricing and setup cost, there is no major setup cost required for AWS AppSync, which is a really great thing becau...
What needs improvement with AWS AppSync?
The current features of AWS AppSync are enough for any developer, but it has some areas for improvement. AWS AppSync can provide first-class support for SQL RDS since writing SQL via VTL is clunky ...
What is your primary use case for AWS AppSync?
My main use case for AWS AppSync is to deploy the application by connecting my frontend and backend application. AWS AppSync serves as a GraphQL API Gateway that sits between my frontend and backen...
How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?
AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...
 

Also Known As

AppSync
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACBL, Puresec, IDT, ASU, Public Good, cookpad, ALDO, ticketmaster
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS AppSync vs. AWS Glue and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.