AWS Glue vs FME comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Safe Software are both solutions in the Cloud Data Integration category. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Safe Software users who would recommend it.

AWS Glue

Read 50 AWS Glue reviews

6,702 Views
4,356 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

FME

Read 7 FME reviews

2,569 Views
2,004 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Glue

FME

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS Glue and FME based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Glue vs. FME Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue vs. FME

December 2025

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Helped 880,511 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

AWS Glue

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Integration (1st)

FME

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (26th)

Featured Reviews

Sridivya Chillappa

application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India

Efficient data integration reduces operational time and enhances metadata management

For the initial setup with AWS Glue, I find it easy to set up the data catalog and create Glue jobs using the visual editor or the visual code. Setting permission sets via IAM rules can be a bit tricky at the start, but we ensure Glue has access to AWS S3, Redshift, and other services. Once the role is configured, it runs smoothly. For advanced configurations, connecting to VPCs and setting up connections with JDBC sources takes more time compared to my cloud experience, but overall, for someone with cloud and ETL experience, the setup is manageable and well done.

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Gert Booysen

Software Solutions Leader at GE Vernova

Extensive format support and reliable integration enhance data management while new pricing model requires reassessment

I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me. Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side. They changed the licensing model, and that made customers think it is overpriced. Some customers were actually looking at alternatives. Pricing with the model changes was perceived negatively. I work primarily with enterprise customers, Vodacom, Eskom, so it's tier-one customers. For small customers, this solution is a bit too expensive. They don't really use it and just do direct integration on smaller implementations. This is basically used by tier-one customers. FME is still able to save time and money for clients. It's still a good investment. Regarding similar products to FME, GE developed a product called Data Fabric. That is a real-time operational integration platform, Data Fabric Network Connect, which is a GE Grid OS product. It is actually more expensive than FME, but the purpose is different as it's operational. The vendor in this case is GE, and it's a company that we bought that used to be called Greenbird. In current use scenarios, FME is still leading compared to Data Fabric. The GE product has a different application.

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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

"AWS Glue is a stable and easy-to-use solution."

"One of the best features of the solution is its ability to easily integrate with other AWS services."

"The solution's technical support is good. Whenever we raise a use case where we face an issue in our company, we get a response from the solution's technical team."

"It is AWS-integrated. There is end-to-end integration with the other AWS services. It is also user-friendly."

"Its user interface is quite good. You just need to choose some options to create a job in AWS Glue. The code-generation feature is also useful. If you don't want to customize it and simply want to read a file and store the data in the database, it can generate the code for you."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"AWS Glue is quite better than other tools, but you have to learn it properly before you start using it."

"AWS Glue is fast and managed by AWS. Hence, you don't have to worry about capacity and the performance of Glue jobs. It has integrations with other data stores of AWS. The product offers metadata management, logging, and ETL processing capabilities. It comes with a powerful feature, Glue Studio, which helps to do queries interactively within the community. It is a managed service and very secure. Another popular and mature service is S3."

More AWS Glue pros

"From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works."

"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."

"All spatial features are unrivaled, and the possibility to execute them based on a scheduled trigger, manual, e-mail, Websocket, tweet, file/directory change or virtually any trigger is most valuable."

"FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes."

"It has a very friendly user interface. You don't need to use a lot of code. For us that's the most important aspect about it. Also, it has a lot of connectors and few forms. It has a strong facial aspect. It can do a lot of facial analysis."

"We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else."

"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface. There is nothing better. It is very easy to debug because you can see all steps where there are failures. Overall the software is easy to optimize a process."

Cons

"Currently, it supports only two languages in the background: Python and Scala. From our customization point of view, it would be helpful if it can also support Java in the background."

"If there's a cluster-related configuration, we have to make worker notes, which is quite a headache when processing a large amount of data."

"Cost-wise, AWS Glue is expensive, so that's an area for improvement. The process for setting up the solution was also complex, which is another area for improvement."

"Only people who can code, either in Java or Python, can use the product freely. Those who don't know Java or Python might find using AWS Glue difficult."

"The solution's visual ETL tool is of no use for actual implementation."

"The product is expensive for data streaming. This area needs improvement."

"In the building and deployment aspects, there is room for improvement. The current process is a bit complicated and could benefit from being more user-friendly and simpler, which would help speed up the deployment process."

"I haven't looked into Glue in terms of seeking out flaws. I've not come across missing features."

More AWS Glue cons

"We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product."

"The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data efficiently. That needs to be added at some point."

"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."

"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."

"FME can improve the geographical transformation. I've had some problems with the geographical transformations, but it's probably mostly because I'm not the most skilled geographer in-house. The solution requires some in-depth knowledge to perform some functions."

"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Glue is a high-priced solution that bills the client $150,000 to $250,000 annually."

"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."

"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."

"This solution is affordable and there is an option to pay for the solution based on your usage."

"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."

"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."

"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 current cost is around forty to fifty thousand a month."

More AWS Glue pricing and cost advice

"The product's price is reasonable."

"We used the standard licensing for our use of FME. The cost was approximately €15,000 annually. We always welcome less expensive solutions, if the solution could be less expensive it would be helpful."

"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Government

32%

Energy/Utilities Company

13%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	32

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?

AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What needs improvement with FME?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for FME?

The use cases for FME are mainly integration to the GE Smallworld product. GE Smallworld is a GE product, and we are using it to integrate with other third-party products into GE Smallworld and ADM...

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What advice do you have for others considering FME?

The overall rating for FME is eight out of ten, and I prefer the feedback to be anonymous. My job title is Senior Solutions Architect.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Integration Cloud Service vs AWS Glue

Compared 5% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs AWS Glue

Compared 4% of the time

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Azure Data Factory vs FME

Compared 17% of the time

SSIS vs FME

Compared 11% of the time

Alteryx Designer vs FME

Compared 7% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs FME

Compared 6% of the time

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs FME

Compared 4% of the time

More FME Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue

January 2026

Download AWS Glue product report

Buyer's Guide

FME

January 2026

Download FME product report

Overview

AWS Glue is a serverless cloud data integration tool that facilitates the discovery, preparation, movement, and integration of data from multiple sources for machine learning (ML), analytics, and application development. The solution includes additional productivity and data ops tooling for running jobs, implementing business workflows, and authoring.

AWS Glue allows users to connect to more than 70 diverse data sources and manage data in a centralized data catalog. The solution facilitates visual creation, running, and monitoring of extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines to load data into users' data lakes. This Amazon product seamlessly integrates with other native applications of the brand and allows users to search and query cataloged data using Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, and Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

The solution also utilizes application programming interface (API) operations to transform users' data, create runtime logs, store job logic, and create notifications for monitoring job runs. The console of AWS Glue connects all of these services into a managed application, facilitating the monitoring and operational processes. The solution also performs provisioning and management of the resources required to run users' workloads in order to minimize manual work time for organizations.

AWS Glue Features

AWS Glue groups its features into four categories - discover, prepare, integrate, and transform. Within those groups are the following features:

Automatic schema discovery: AWS Glue crawlers connect to the organization's source or target data source through a prioritized list of classifiers to determine the schema for users' data. This feature creates metadata in companies' AWS Glue Data Catalog.
Schemas for data stream management: The AWS Glue Schema Registry enables users to validate and control the evolution of streaming data through registered Apache Avro schemas for no additional charge.
Automatic scaling based on workload: This feature dynamically scales resources up and down based on workload. The feature controls job resources, removing them depending on how much the workload can be split up.
FindMatches: This feature is for machine learning-based data deduplication and cleansing, and works by finding records that are imperfect matches of each other to remove useless data copies.
Edit, debug, and test ETL code: This feature helps users who have chosen to interactively develop their ETL code by providing development endpoints for editing, debugging, and testing the code it generates for them.
AWS Glue DataBrew: An interactive, point-and-click visual interface for specialists to clean and normalize data without the need to write any code.
AWS Glue Interactive Sessions: This feature simplifies the development of data integration jobs by enabling data engineers to interactively prepare and explore data.
AWS Glue Studio Job Notebooks: This AWS Glue feature provides serverless notebooks with minimal setup, allowing developers to start working in a timely manner.
Complex ETL pipeline building: This feature allows the product to be invoked on a schedule, on demand, or based on an event, allowing users to start multiple jobs in parallel or specify dependencies to build complex ETL pipelines.
AWS Glue Studio: This AWS Glue feature allows users to visually transform data through a drag-and-drop interface. The product automatically generates the code for ETL processes for users' data.

AWS Glue Benefits

AWS Glue offers a wide range of benefits for its users. These benefits include:

Users of other AWS products can easily onboard with AWS Glue, as it is integrated across a wide range of the company's services.
The solution is serverless, which allows for a lower total cost of ownership.
AWS Glue offers more power for users, as it automates much of the effort in building, maintaining, and running ETL jobs.
The product allows customers to easily discover and search across all their AWS datasets through AWS Glue Data Catalog.
AWS Glue does not require additional payment for managing and enforcing schemas for data streams.
The solution facilitates the authority of scalable ETL jobs for beginners and non-coding experts through a drag-and-drop interface.

Reviews from Real Users

Mustapha A., a cloud data engineer at Jems Groupe, likes AWS Glue because it is a product that is great for serverless data transformations.

Liana I., CEO at Quark Technologies SRL, describes AWS Glue as a highly scalable, reliable, and beneficial pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

FME is the data integration platform with the best support for spatial data. Run workflows on the desktop or deploy them in a server or cloud environment.

Safe Software

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System

Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue vs. FME

December 2025

Free Report: AWS Glue vs. FME

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