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

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
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Cloudera Data Science Workbench is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 7.5%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks7.5%
Cloudera Data Science Workbench1.6%
Other90.9%
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

"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."
"The Cloudera Data Science Workbench is customizable and easy to use."
"There are good features for turning off clusters."
"Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable."
"One of the newest features brought into this solution provides you with a way to solve, deploy, and train models using the platform itself, or it can connect to your Azure Machine Learning in order to train, deploy, and productionalize some of the machine learning models."
"Databricks' Lakehouse architecture has been most useful for us, and the data governance has been absolutely efficient in between other kinds of solutions."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"Scalability is one of the main features of Databricks."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use SQL directly with Databricks."
"Databricks is also user-friendly, providing customizable codes and models that allow people to experiment quickly."
 

Cons

"We found this solution a little bit difficult to scale."
"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."
"I would love an integration in my desktop IDE. For now, I have to code on their webpage."
"Pricing is one of the things that could be improved. Also, there could be improvement in the visual analytics space there and on the machine learning functions."
"Databricks is not geared towards the end-user, but rather it is for data engineers or data scientists."
"For a small workload, Databricks may not be worth the costs."
"Performance could be improved."
"From a purely technical perspective, I would rate Databricks an eight out of ten. However, there is a failure in terms of user adoption."
"Databricks is an analytics platform. It should offer more data science. It should have more features for data scientists to work with."
"The integration and query capabilities can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The price of Databricks is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The pricing depends on the usage itself."
"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."
"We find Databricks to be very expensive, although this improved when we found out how to shut it down at night."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Science Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
8%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
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 Enterprise57
 

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: June 2026.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.