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
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 6.7%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks6.7%
Cloudera Data Science Workbench1.6%
Other91.7%
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."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The most significant benefit Databricks has brought to my company is the Unity Catalog."
"Databricks helps crunch petabytes of data in a very short period of time for data scientists or business analysts, helping with fraud analysis, finance, projections, and more, which is exactly the purpose of big data and analytics."
"Databricks is quite easy to use and requires less coding and customizations than a solution like AWS SageMaker, enabling more people to efficiently build and host their ML code while leveraging the already integrated MLflow to track and monitor all our different experiments."
"Databricks' most valuable features are the workspace and notebooks, and its integration, interface, and documentation are also good."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"I like the simplicity and ease of use."
"The capability of the product is quite good and we are very satisfied with it overall."
 

Cons

"Running this solution requires a minimum of 12GB to 16GB of RAM."
"We found this solution a little bit difficult to scale."
"The tool's MLOps is not good. It's pricing also needs to improve."
"Databricks should have more libraries for predictive analysis and machine learning. It should have more compatible and more advanced visualization and machine learning libraries."
"The integration of data could be a bit better."
"The solution is not exactly stable. We've faced a few bugs which have really affected it, especially when it comes to connecting with Spark."
"Databricks can improve by making the documentation better."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio."
"Generative AI is catching up in areas like data governance and enterprise flavor. Hence, these are places where Databricks has to be faster."
"The product should provide more advanced features in future releases."
"Databricks requires writing code in Python or SQL, so if you're a good programmer then you can use Databricks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"It is an expensive tool. The licensing model is a pay-as-you-go one."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"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 price of Databricks is reasonable compared to other solutions."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Science Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
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.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.