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Azure Databricks vs Databricks 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

Azure Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Sr. Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited
Data pipelines have accelerated and support reliable analytics collaboration across teams
From our experience, Azure Databricks could be improved with simpler cluster management and more predictable cost visibility and enhanced native monitoring for large enterprise environments. We would also like richer governance features, better debugging for distributed Spark jobs, and more granular controls for workload optimization over and across multiple teams, which we have at multiple customer environments and within our organization. In day-to-day operations, troubleshooting failed Spark jobs can still be time-consuming, especially in complex distributed workloads. We would like clearer root cause diagnostics and more actionable performance recommendations within Azure Databricks. Better cost optimization insights at the job and cluster level would also help us manage large multiple team environments more efficiently.
SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best features in Azure Databricks for me are that it's easy to use, flexible, and has fast processing, and you can use multiple data types."
"Azure Databricks gives the capability to handle a lot of big data use cases and machine learning use cases, but machine learning use cases need quite a lot of compute power, and that is where the cost spikes up."
"The concept of Azure Databricks is a very good one, especially for the data products concept and idea."
"My pipelines are now significantly faster compared to older ETL tools, as what used to take over 12 to 14 hours to process 2 GB of source data in Synapse Analytics now completes within 5 hours using the Azure Databricks framework for the transformation part, illustrating a substantial improvement in performance."
"Regarding the learning curve, it is a good technology; it is the first time I am working on a cloud platform, and before that, I have not worked on any data engineering tool that is on cloud, so it is good learning."
"Azure Databricks has significantly improved our ability to process data and large data sets, and deliver analytics projects faster for our customers."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Databricks serves as a single platform for conducting the entire end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning models or AI ops."
"The most valuable feature of Databricks is the integration of the data warehouse and data lake, and the development of the lake house. Additionally, it integrates well with Spark for processing data in production."
"We like that this solution can handle a wide variety and velocity of data engineering, either in batch mode or real-time."
"Databricks is a unified platform that provides features like streaming and batch processing so all the data scientists, analysts, and engineers can collaborate on a single platform and it has all the features you need, so you don't need to go for any other tool."
"Databricks' most valuable feature is the data transformation through PySpark."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the hardware and the resources it quickly provides without much hassle."
"Of the available feature set, I like the Imageflow feature a lot."
 

Cons

"The biggest friction point I have experienced with Azure Databricks is its cost-effectiveness; for projects with less data volume, it is advisable to use Azure Fabric services instead, as Azure Databricks may not be suitable for low volume processing."
"Lower pricing is currently my only focus and I'm still exploring Azure Databricks, so it's too early to say something, but overall, I'm saying that it is the future."
"At this point, I cannot comment on the cost being ideal; it is on the higher side, but in the cloud-based environment, compared to on-premise, it could be far lesser in cost."
"The only concern is perhaps related to the pricing and cost that Azure Databricks incurs."
"I have given the product a rating of six out of ten just because I do not use all of the functionalities, and I see some direction for improvement as well; also, every product has something to improve, and I have not used many features in this product."
"From our experience, Azure Databricks could be improved with simpler cluster management and more predictable cost visibility and enhanced native monitoring for large enterprise environments."
"The cost of this solution is high, on the expensive side."
"In the future, I would like to see Data Lake support. That is something that I'm looking forward to."
"However, the platform could become easier to use."
"The ability to customize our own pipelines would enhance the product, similar to what's possible using ML files in Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation of processes and how it works."
"The interface of Databricks could be easier to use when compared to other solutions. It is not easy for non-data scientists. The user interface is important before we had to write code manually and as solutions move to "No code AI" it is critical that the interface is very good."
"There is room for improvement in visualization."
"The query plan is not easy with Databrick's job level. If I want to tune any of the code, it is not easily available in the blogs as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The basic version of this solution is now open-source, so there are no license costs involved. However, there is a charge for any advanced functionality and this can be quite expensive."
"The solution is affordable."
"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"Databricks is a very expensive solution. Pricing is an area that could definitely be improved. They could provide a lower end compute and probably reduce the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise60
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Databricks?
Regarding the licensing cost of Azure Databricks, it has evolved quite a lot. The compute is the biggest cost, as with any other big data solutions. The storage cost is almost minimal or negligible...
What needs improvement with Azure Databricks?
From our experience, Azure Databricks could be improved with simpler cluster management and more predictable cost visibility and enhanced native monitoring for large enterprise environments. We wou...
What is your primary use case for Azure Databricks?
Azure Databricks is our primary platform for building scalable data engineering and analytics pipelines for enterprise customers. We use it to inject, transform, and process large volumes of struct...
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

No data available
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Databricks vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.