Databricks vs IBM Db2 Warehouse comparison

Databricks and IBM are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Additionally, 96% of Databricks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Databricks

Read 91 Databricks reviews

23,965 Views
2,157 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Read 12 IBM Db2 Warehouse reviews

1,238 Views
879 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Databricks

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Databricks and IBM Db2 Warehouse based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Data Warehouse solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Databricks vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse

July 2025

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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

Databricks

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (8th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (11th)

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7

Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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Sherpard Muzuva

Senior Technical Manager- IBM Enterprise Systems at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)

Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance

While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is fast, it's scalable, and it does the job it needs to do."

"The most valuable feature of Databricks is the notebook, data factory, and ease of use."

"It offers AI functionalities that assist with code management and machine learning processes."

"Databricks serves as a single platform for conducting the entire end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning models or AI ops."

"I like that Databricks is a unified platform that lets you do streaming and batch processing in the same place. You can do analytics, too. They have added something called Databricks SQL Analytics, allowing users to connect to the data lake to perform analytics. Databricks also will enable you to share your data securely. It integrates with your reporting system as well."

"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."

"It's easy to increase performance as required."

"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."

More Databricks pros

"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."

"Provides good security and reliability."

"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."

"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."

"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."

"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse pros

Cons

"I would love an integration in my desktop IDE. For now, I have to code on their webpage."

"While Databricks is generally a robust solution, I have noticed a limitation with debugging in the Delta Live Table, which could be improved."

"In my opinion, areas of Databricks that have room for improvement involve the dashboards. Until recently, everyone used third-party systems such as Power BI to connect to Databricks for dashboards and reports, but they're now coming up with their IBI dashboard, and I think they're on the right track to improve that even further."

"If I want to create a Databricks account, I need to have a prior cloud account such as an AWS account or an Azure account. Only then can I create a Databricks account on the cloud. However, if they can make it so that I can still try Databricks even if I don't have a cloud account on AWS and Azure, it would be great. That is, it would be nice if it were possible to create a pseudo account and be provided with a free trial. It is very essential to creating a workforce on Databricks. For example, students or corporate staff can then explore and learn Databricks."

"The data visualization for this solution could be improved. They have started to roll out a data visualization tool inside Databricks but it is in the early stages. It's not comparable to a solution like Power BI, Luca, or Tableau."

"The pricing of Databricks could be cheaper."

"The stability of the clusters or the instances of Databricks would be better if it was a much more stable environment. We've had issues with crashes."

"I would like more integration with SQL for using data in different workspaces."

More Databricks cons

"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."

"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."

"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."

"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."

"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"There are different versions."

"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 solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."

"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."

"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."

"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."

"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."

More Databricks pricing and cost advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?

The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?

The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?

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Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs Databricks

Compared 7% of the time

Dremio vs Databricks

Compared 6% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Databricks

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 39% of the time

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 22% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

Magnitude vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Databricks

August 2025

Download Databricks product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse

August 2025

Download IBM Db2 Warehouse product report

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse

Overview

Databricks is utilized for advanced analytics, big data processing, machine learning models, ETL operations, data engineering, streaming analytics, and integrating multiple data sources.

Organizations leverage Databricks for predictive analysis, data pipelines, data science, and unifying data architectures. It is also used for consulting projects, financial reporting, and creating APIs. Industries like insurance, retail, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals use Databricks for data management and analytics due to its user-friendly interface, built-in machine learning libraries, support for multiple programming languages, scalability, and fast processing.

What are the key features of Databricks?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies operations and usability.
Built-in machine learning libraries: Facilitates machine learning tasks.
Support for multiple programming languages: Enhances flexibility.
Scalability: Efficiently handles growing data needs.
Fast processing: Improves performance and speed.
Automated optimization: Reduces manual efforts.
Data visualization: Provides insightful visuals.
Collaborative features: Enhances teamwork.
Delta Lake performance: Boosts data management.
Seamless cluster management: Simplifies system operations.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for in Databricks reviews?

Efficiency in handling large datasets: Ensures smooth processing.
Interactive workspace environment: Improves user collaboration.
Integration with platforms: Provides connectivity benefits.
Performance optimization: Enhances overall system performance.
Support for data governance and security: Ensures data integrity and protection.

Databricks is implemented in insurance for risk analysis and claims processing; in retail for customer analytics and inventory management; in manufacturing for predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization; and in pharmaceuticals for drug discovery and patient data analysis. Users value its scalability, machine learning support, collaboration tools, and Delta Lake performance but seek improvements in visualization, pricing, and integration with BI tools.

Databricks

InfoSphere Warehouse is a suite of products that combines the strength of DB2 with a data warehousing infrastructure from IBM. You can use InfoSphere Warehouse to build a complete data warehousing solution that includes a highly scalable relational database, data access capabilities, and front-end analysis tools.

IBM

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse

July 2025

Free Report: Databricks vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse

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