Azure Data Factory vs Spring Cloud Data Flow comparison

Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the Data Integration category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #21 with an average rating of 7.8. Microsoft holds a 3.7% mindshare in DI, compared to Broadcom’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Azure Data Factory

Read 93 Azure Data Factory reviews

11,582 Views
8,107 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Spring Cloud Data Flow

Read 9 Spring Cloud Data Flow reviews

3,005 Views
1,352 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Azure Data Factory

Spring Cloud Data Flow

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Spring Cloud Data Flow and Azure Data Factory are prominent products in the data processing arena. Azure Data Factory appears to have an edge with its diverse integrations and scalability options, whereas Spring Cloud Data Flow provides flexibility and support for Java-based complex workflows.

Features: Spring Cloud Data Flow supports microservice architectures and provides comprehensive data-processing capabilities, making it ideal for Java-based environments. It offers integration with Kubernetes and Docker, adding flexibility for various deployment scenarios. Azure Data Factory has a robust range of data connectors and integrates seamlessly with other Azure services. It provides a powerful user interface for creating ETL pipelines and supports real-time data processing workflows.

Room for Improvement: Spring Cloud Data Flow could enhance its ease of use for non-developers, improve integration with non-Java environments, and optimize its graphical interface for pipeline management. Azure Data Factory would benefit from improved documentation, expanded offline capabilities, and additional real-time processing features to enhance its usability outside the Azure ecosystem.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Spring Cloud Data Flow offers deployment flexibility through Kubernetes and Docker, with strong community and enterprise support available. Azure Data Factory focuses on a cloud-first approach with global availability, ensuring a simpler deployment process and scalability. It benefits from Azure's comprehensive customer service infrastructure, often resulting in faster setup times.

Pricing and ROI: Spring Cloud Data Flow provides open-source access that can reduce costs, though enterprise support incurs additional fees. Azure Data Factory operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, aligning with scalability needs, offering potentially better ROI for larger deployments. While Spring Cloud Data Flow may lower initial costs, Azure Data Factory provides a predictable cost model for scaling environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Data Factory vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow

December 2025

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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

Azure Data Factory

Ranking in Data Integration

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (2nd)

Spring Cloud Data Flow

Ranking in Data Integration

21st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Azure Data Factory is 3.7%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Data Factory	3.7%
Spring Cloud Data Flow	1.1%
Other	95.2%

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

KandaswamyMuthukrishnan

Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Integrates diverse data sources and streamlines ETL processes effectively

Regarding potential areas of improvement for Azure Data Factory, there is a need for better data transformation, especially since many people are now depending on DataBricks more for connectivity and data integration. Azure Data Factory should consider how to enhance integration or filtering for more transformations, such as integrating with Spark clusters. I am satisfied with Azure Data Factory so far, but I suggest integrating some AI functionality to analyze data during the transition itself, providing insights such as null records, common records, and duplicates without running a separate pipeline or job. The monitoring tools in Azure Data Factory are helpful for optimizing data pipelines; while the current feature is adequate, they can improve by creating a live dashboard to see the online process, including how much percentage has been completed, which will be very helpful for people who are monitoring the pipeline.

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Lipika Naik

Senior Software Engineer at QBE Regional Insurance

Provides ease of integration with other cloud platforms

Spring Cloud Data Flow is a useful product if I consider how there are different providers with whom my company had to deal, and most of them offer cloud-based products. I can't explain any crucial circumstances where the product's integration capabilities were helpful, but the aforementioned details explain the scenario for which I used the solution. I was only involved with the development of the product and not with the data pipeline configuration phase. The use of Spring Cloud Data Flow greatly impacted projects' time to market since our company's intention was to actually deploy and ensure that the payment platform integrated with it, which was an easy process. The product's user interface was very intuitive. The tool was deployed in multiple environments, but I am not sure about the production. From the time I started taking up the job in my current organization, I saw that we have deployed the tool in multiple environments wherein the number of users extensively used the product in the UAT environment, which is one of the most stable environments. There were 20 different methods to test the tool. I wouldn't be able to tell you the production details of the tool as I was more part of the production deployment, but I can say that it was deployed with the intent of making it available for 10,000 users. Those who plan to use the product should enjoy the flexibility of the solution. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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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

"The feature I found most helpful in Azure Data Factory is the pipeline feature, including being able to connect to different sources. Azure Data Factory also has built-in security, which is another valuable feature."

"When it comes to our business requirements, this solution has worked well for us. However, we have not stretched it to the limit."

"It is beneficial that the solution is written with Spark as the back end."

"I like how you can create your own pipeline in your space and reuse those creations. You can collaborate with other people who want to use your code."

"Azure Data Factory became more user-friendly when data-flows were introduced."

"I like its integration with SQL pools, its ability to work with Databricks, its pipelines, and the serverless architecture are the most effective features."

"The most valuable feature is the copy activity."

"The solution can scale very easily."

More Azure Data Factory pros

"The most valuable features of Spring Cloud Data Flow are the simple programming model, integration, dependency Injection, and ability to do any injection. Additionally, auto-configuration is another important feature because we don't have to configure the database and or set up the boilerplate in the database in every project. The composability is good, we can create small workloads and compose them in any way we like."

"There are a lot of options in Spring Cloud. It's flexible in terms of how we can use it. It's a full infrastructure."

"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."

"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it allows us to use different batch data sources, retrieve the data, and then do the data processing, after which we can convert and store it in the target."

"The ease of deployment on Kubernetes, the seamless integration for orchestration of various pipelines, and the visual dashboard that simplifies operations even for non-specialists such as quality analysts."

"The best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."

Cons

"For some of the data, there were some issues with data mapping. Some of the error messages were a little bit foggy. There could be more of a quick start guide or some inline examples. The documentation could be better."

"There's no Oracle connector if you want to do transformation using data flow activity, so Azure Data Factory needs more connectors for data flow transformation."

"There is no built-in pipeline exit activity when encountering an error."

"I would like to see this time travel feature in Snowflake added to Azure Data Factory."

"The speed and performance need to be improved."

"Snowflake connectivity was recently added and if the vendor provided some videos on how to create data then that would be helpful."

"You cannot use a custom data delimiter, which means that you have problems receiving data in certain formats."

"We require Azure Data Factory to be able to connect to Google Analytics."

More Azure Data Factory cons

"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."

"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."

"There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or refreshing the dashboard."

"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."

"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."

"Spring Cloud Data Flow could improve the user interface. We can drag and drop in the application for the configuration and settings, and deploy it right from the UI, without having to run a CI/CD pipeline. However, that does not work with Kubernetes, it only works when we are working with jars as the Spring Cloud Data Flow applications."

"The solution's community support could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ADF is cheaper compared to AWS."

"The licensing cost is included in the Synapse."

"In terms of licensing costs, we pay somewhere around S14,000 USD per month. There are some additional costs. For example, we would have to subscribe to some additional computing and for elasticity, but they are minimal."

"The pricing is pay-as-you-go or reserve instance. Of the two options, reserve instance is much cheaper."

"The solution is cheap."

"Product is priced at the market standard."

"For our use case, it is not expensive. We take into the picture everything: resources, learning curve, and maintenance."

"Understanding the pricing model for Data Factory is quite complex."

More Azure Data Factory pricing and cost advice

"The solution provides value for money, and we are currently using its community edition."

"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."

"If you want support from Spring Cloud Data Flow there is a fee. The Spring Framework is open-source and this is a free solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	57

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

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 Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?

Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...

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How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?

Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spring Cloud Data Flow?

There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or r...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Spring Cloud Data Flow?

We had a project for content management, which involved multiple applications each handling content ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and storage for different customers independently. We want...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Spring Cloud Data Flow?

I would definitely recommend Spring Cloud Data Flow. It requires minimal additional effort or time to understand how it works, and even non-specialists can use it effectively with its friendly docu...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 7% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

More Azure Data Factory Competitors

Apache Flink vs Spring Cloud Data Flow

Compared 29% of the time

TIBCO BusinessWorks vs Spring Cloud Data Flow

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Kafka vs Spring Cloud Data Flow

Compared 5% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Spring Cloud Data Flow

Compared 5% of the time

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs Spring Cloud Data Flow

Compared 2% of the time

More Spring Cloud Data Flow Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Spring Cloud Data Flow

December 2025

Download Spring Cloud Data Flow product report

Overview

Azure Data Factory efficiently manages and integrates data from various sources, enabling seamless movement and transformation across platforms. Its valuable features include seamless integration with Azure services, handling large data volumes, flexible transformation, user-friendly interface, extensive connectors, and scalability. Users have experienced improved team performance, workflow simplification, enhanced collaboration, streamlined processes, and boosted productivity.

Microsoft

Spring Cloud Data Flow is a toolkit for building data integration and real-time data processing pipelines.
Pipelines consist of Spring Boot apps, built using the Spring Cloud Stream or Spring Cloud Task microservice frameworks. This makes Spring Cloud Data Flow suitable for a range of data processing use cases, from import/export to event streaming and predictive analytics. Use Spring Cloud Data Flow to connect your Enterprise to the Internet of Anything—mobile devices, sensors, wearables, automobiles, and more.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. LinkedIn 7. Mastercard 8. Nestle 9. Pfizer 10. Samsung 11. Siemens 12. Toyota 13. Unilever 14. Verizon 15. Walmart 16. Accenture 17. American Express 18. AT&T 19. Bank of America 20. Cisco 21. Deloitte 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. JPMorgan Chase 27. Microsoft (Azure Data Factory is developed by Microsoft) 28. Oracle 29. Procter & Gamble 30. Salesforce 31. Shell 32. Visa

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Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow

December 2025

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