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Databricks vs Dremio comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Organizations experience mixed ROI from Databricks, with benefits in efficiency but challenges in converting improvements to monetary returns.
Sentiment score
4.0
Dremio streamlines tool communication, supports diverse data sources, and reduces personnel needs, saving time and costs effectively.
This reduction in both time and money resulted in real-time impact and significant cost savings.
Consultant at Nice Software Solutions
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
Head CEO at bizmetric
Dremio surely saves time, reduces costs, and all those things because we don't have to worry so much about the infrastructure to make the different tools communicate.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Databricks' customer service has mixed reviews, with high ratings for professionalism but concerns about response times and partner delays.
Sentiment score
6.1
Dremio's customer service is praised for responsiveness and helpfulness, though there's a need for more staff as demand increases.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
I would give Databricks customer support a rating of ten.
I would rate customer support a ten out of ten.
We contact the technical support at least weekly; currently, it's more or less daily because we face performance issues, crashes of queries sometimes, and we also need support for configuration of the query engines and so on.
Data Architect at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
We have had to reach out for customer support many times, and they respond, so they are pretty supportive about some long-term issues.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks efficiently handles large datasets, leveraging scalable cloud infrastructure, despite cost and configuration concerns, benefiting various industry users.
Sentiment score
7.3
Dremio's scalability is praised for handling data growth, with effective configurations on Kubernetes and Docker cited by users.
The sky's the limit with Databricks.
Governance And Engagement Lead
Databricks offers very good scalability, allowing you to increase or reduce processing resources according to the volume of data and demand.
Analista de Dados at Conta Azul
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
Dremio's scalability can handle growing data and user demands easily.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
Internally, if it's on Docker or Kubernetes, scalability will be built into the system.
Senior Software Architect at USEReady
Dremio's scalability depends on your hardware and your deployment.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is highly rated for stability and reliability, with occasional minor issues quickly fixed by support.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dremio is generally stable but may require restarts, with high ratings for stability and core functionality.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I rate Dremio a nine in terms of stability.
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
We refactored the query, and that worked, but it still doesn't make you confident to go to production with a product that might crash depending on the query you send it.
Data Architect at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks users seek improved integration, flexible pricing, better interfaces, enhanced tools, and support for various coding languages.
Dremio needs faster query execution, enhanced features, improved integrations, and better support for complex queries and documentation.
Adjusting features like worker nodes and node utilization during cluster creation could mitigate these failures.
Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
Solution Architect at Mercedes-Benz AG
Starburst comes with around 50 connectors now.
Senior Software Architect at USEReady
Before we wrap up, I want to add that Dremio is lacking a semantic layer in a manner that the user can just choose dimensions, metrics, and filters to query the data.
It should be easier to get Arctic or an open-source version of Arctic onto the software version so that development teams can experiment with it.
Data Consultant at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

Databricks offers tiered, flexible pricing; though sometimes seen as expensive, it can be cost-effective with efficient resource use.
Dremio offers competitive pricing but Enterprise licensing can be costly; setup is in-house, cluster costs depend on data volume.
It is not a cheap solution.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
I believe that in terms of credits for Databricks, we're spending between £15,000 and £20,000 a month.
Governance And Engagement Lead
I have had a very good experience with pricing, as there was a drop in costs compared to the previous tool.
Analista de Dados at Conta Azul
I chose eight out of ten because Dremio is expensive for the Enterprise version, particularly regarding licensing.
Data Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I had a good experience with pricing, as the pricing seems okay to me and the client.
Dremio does have a core of the engine that is open-source, but all the important features for the enterprise version are under license.
Data Architect at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Databricks provides a unified platform with Lakehouse architecture, supporting multiple languages and robust tools for efficient data processing.
Dremio integrates multiple data systems, supports federated queries, enhances data management, and simplifies access with a user-friendly interface.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
Data Engineer at CRAFT Tech
Having everything under one system and an easier-to-work-with interface, along with having API integrations, adds significant value to working with Dremio.
Data Consultant at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Dremio has positively impacted my organization as nowadays we are connected to multiple databases from multiple environments, multiple APIs, and applications, and Dremio organizes everything in an amazing way for me.
Data Analyst at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Multiple data sources can be queried in one query, and it is not just a query engine.
Data Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
3rd
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Dremio
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
10th
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 6.7%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dremio is 2.0%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks6.7%
Dremio2.0%
Other91.3%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Corrr Moray - PeerSpot reviewer
SR BI developer at BRQ Digital Solutions
Has simplified complex data integration workflows and supported consistent reporting across multiple sources
We also have a close relationship with the team that does the Dremio maintenance for the database, like upgrading the versions and they know about some specific problems we had in the past, such as a memory leak. We had a memory leak on some versions, which sometimes stopped the service. Since we are using Dremio installed like a server, not a SaaS solution, many times we need to stop and restart the service to clear all the cache and all that, and this is the thing I should add. I see that many times the new versions of Dremio have not fixed old bugs, and in some new versions, old problems that were previously fixed come back again, so I think the upgrade part could use improvement. I remember using some features in the past, like pivot tables, which proved to be really difficult, but I know this is a fault also for other vendors. Pivoting, transposing, and unpivoting are often not so good. CTEs also many times prove to be not so good, so I think these two main items could be improved significantly if they standardize them.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise60
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dremio?
I chose eight out of ten because Dremio is expensive for the Enterprise version, particularly regarding licensing.
What needs improvement with Dremio?
I think Dremio can be improved to query faster than multiple sources and big data lakehouses. The community version could be updated for new data catalog connections. I think the documentation is s...
What is your primary use case for Dremio?
I have been using Dremio to select multiple data sources, retrieve multiple data sources, and create and maintain Iceberg tables for the data lakehouse. My main use case for Dremio is to actively c...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Dremio AWS - BYOL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
UBS, TransUnion, Quantium, Daimler, OVH
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Dremio and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
919,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.