Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
89
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Confluent is 8.2%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 14.6%, up from 10.5% 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

"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"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."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."
"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 tools."
"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."
"The fast data loading process and data storage capabilities are great."
"Databricks gives us the ability to build a lakehouse framework and do everything implicit to this type of database structure. We also like the ability to stream events. Databricks covers a broad spectrum, from reporting and machine learning to streaming events. It's important for us to have all these features in one platform."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"The most valuable feature of Databricks is the integration with Microsoft Azure."
"A very valuable feature is the data processing, and the solution is specifically good at using the Spark ecosystem."
"The solution is easy to use and has a quick start-up time due to being on the cloud."
"It helps integrate data science and machine learning capabilities."
"We are completely satisfied with the ease of connecting to different sources of data or pocket files in the search"
 

Cons

"They should remove Zookeeper because of security issues."
"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"The initial setup of Databricks could be complex."
"There could be more support for automated machine learning in the database. I would like to see more ways to do analysis so that the reporting is more understandable."
"Databricks doesn't offer the use of Python scripts by itself and is not connected to GitHub repositories or anything similar. This is something that is missing. if they could integrate with Git tools it would be an advantage."
"The solution has some scalability and integration limitations when consolidating legacy systems."
"In the next release, I would like to see more optimization features."
"There has been a significant evolution in databases. One area of improvement is the Databricks File System (DBFS), where command-line challenges arise when accessing files."
"Costs can quickly add up if you don't plan for it."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 an expensive solution."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"It comes with a high cost."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"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."
"The solution is affordable."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"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 pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."
"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 solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Streaming Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.