No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cloudera Data Science Workbench vs Databricks comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Cloudera Data Science Workb...
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
24th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Cloudera Data Science Workbench is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 6.5%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks6.5%
Cloudera Data Science Workbench1.7%
Other91.8%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Ismail Peer - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Management Lead Advisor at Unionbank Philippines
Useful for data science modeling but improvement is needed in MLOps and pricing
If you don't configure CDSW well, then it might be not useful for you. Deploying the tool can vary in complexity, but most of the time, it's relatively simple and straightforward. Triggering a job from data to production is easy, as the platform automates the deployment process. However, ensuring optimal resource allocation is essential for smooth operations.
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 Cloudera Data Science Workbench is customizable and easy to use."
"I appreciate CDSW's ability to logically segregate environments, such as data, DR, and production, ensuring they don't interfere with each other. The deployment of machine learning is fast and easy to manage. Its API calls are also fast."
"Databricks also offers exceptional performance and scalability."
"We can scale the product."
"Databricks has helped us have a good presence in data."
"We looked at both Snowflake and BigQuery as a comparison with this solution, and we chose this product as it offered more scalability and a higher level of security, which is extremely important in our banking environment."
"Databricks has improved my organization by allowing us to transform data from sources to a different format and feed that to the analytics, business intelligence, and reporting teams. This tool makes it easy to do those kinds of things."
"We chose Databricks because the processing power was better and it was a better fit for our use case."
"Databricks provides a consistent interface for data engineers to work with data in a consistent language on a single integrated platform for ingesting, processing, and serving data to the end user."
"The notebooks and the ability to share them with collaborators are valuable, as multiple developers can use a single cluster."
 

Cons

"The tool's MLOps is not good. It's pricing also needs to improve."
"Running this solution requires a minimum of 12GB to 16GB of RAM."
"We found this solution a little bit difficult to scale."
"Doesn't provide a lot of credits or trial options."
"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."
"The solution could be improved by integrating it with data packets."
"The product should provide more advanced features in future releases."
"The solution could be improved by adding a feature that would make it more user-friendly for our team. The feature is simple, but it would be useful. Currently, our team is more familiar with the language R, but Databricks requires the use of Jupyter Notebooks which primarily supports Python. We have tried using RStudio, but it is not a fully integrated solution. To fully utilize Databricks, we have to use the Jupyter interface. One feature that would make it easier for our team to adopt the Jupyter interface would be the ability to select a specific variable or line of code and execute it within a cell. This feature is available in other Jupyter Notebooks outside of Databricks and in our own IDE, but it is not currently available within Databricks. If this feature were added, it would make the transition to using Databricks much smoother for our team."
"I present a lot of projects in various forums and seminars and there aren't a lot of credits and trial options with Databricks. Even if we want to explore, we're not able to and that's a challenge."
"Sometimes we experience issues connecting our database to Databricks. There are no direct connectors — they are very limited."
"I believe that this product could be improved by becoming more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The solution is based on a licensing model."
"Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five."
"My smallest project is around a hundred euros, and my most expensive is just under a thousand euros a week. That is based on terabytes of data processed each month."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Science Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise60
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

CDSW
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IQVIA, Rush University Medical Center, Western Union
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudera Data Science Workbench vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.