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Confluent vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (8th), Data Science Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Confluent is 8.2%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 14.5%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.
ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"The benefit is escaping email communication. Sometimes people ignore emails or put them into spam, but with Confluence, everyone sees the same text at the same time."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."
"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"It offers AI functionalities that assist with code management and machine learning processes."
"The ability to stream data and the windowing feature are valuable."
"The solution is built from Spark and has integration with MLflow, which is important for our use case."
"I would rate them ten out of ten."
"It helps integrate data science and machine learning capabilities."
"Ability to work collaboratively without having to worry about the infrastructure."
"The tool helps with data processing and analytics with large-scale data or big data since it is associated with managing data at a large scale."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use SQL directly with Databricks."
 

Cons

"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"There is a limitation when it comes to seamlessly importing Microsoft documents into Confluent pages, which can be inconvenient for users who frequently work with Microsoft Office tools and need to transition their content to Confluent."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"The pricing model should include the ability to pick features and be charged for them only."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"Doesn't provide a lot of credits or trial options."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation of processes and how it works."
"The API deployment and model deployment are not easy on the Databricks side."
"The pricing of Databricks could be cheaper."
"Performance could be improved."
"The tool should improve its integration with other products."
"The API deployment and model deployment are not easy on the Databricks side."
"Cluster failure is one of the biggest weaknesses I notice in our Databricks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It comes with a high cost."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"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."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"The licensing costs of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.