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Cloudera Data Science Workbench vs Databricks comparison

 

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
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Cloudera Data Science Workbench is 1.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 8.3%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks8.3%
Cloudera Data Science Workbench1.8%
Other89.9%
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."
"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."
"We like that this solution can handle a wide variety and velocity of data engineering, either in batch mode or real-time."
"Databricks is also user-friendly, providing customizable codes and models that allow people to experiment quickly."
"The ability to stream data and the windowing feature are valuable."
"It's very simple to use Databricks Apache Spark."
"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."
"It has allowed our data engineers, data scientists, and analysts to collaborate and work on the same platform."
"The capacity of use of the different types of coding is valuable. Databricks also has good performance because it is running in spark extra storage, meaning the performance and the capacity use different kinds of codes."
"Databricks is based on a Spark cluster and it is fast. Performance-wise, it is great."
 

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."
"We often use a single cluster to ingest Databricks, which Databricks doesn't recommend. They suggest using a no-cluster solution like job clusters. This can be overwhelming for us because we started smaller."
"Databricks doesn't offer the use of Python scripts by itself and is not connected to GitHub repositories or anything similar."
"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 product could be improved by offering an expansion of their visualization capabilities, which currently assists in development in their notebook environment."
"A couple of times I faced an issue where a long-running process was consuming a lot of time and then stopped abruptly."
"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."
"Databricks' performance when serving the data to an analytics tool isn't as good as Snowflake's."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"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 product pricing is moderate."
"We find Databricks to be very expensive, although this improved when we found out how to shut it down at night."
"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."
"The licensing costs of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

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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: March 2026.
886,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.