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Databricks vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.5
Databricks enhances efficiency and ROI, offering scalable solutions and cost savings over traditional Hadoop with easy setup.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides cost savings and efficiency with serverless options, achieving up to 70% ROI in years.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks' support is generally praised for responsiveness, though some note delays, with resources often sufficient for independent problem-solving.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics support varies, with larger clients benefiting more, while smaller clients face slower, less expert assistance.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
I rate the technical support as fine because they have levels of technical support available, especially partners who get really good support from Databricks on new features.
They are slow to respond and not very knowledgeable.
This is an underestimation of the real impact because we use big data also to monitor the network and the customer.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Databricks is praised for its adaptability, scalability, automation features, and performance across industries but needs improved autoscaling control.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers scalable solutions with serverless architecture, appreciated for flexibility and adaptability despite potential costs.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
I would rate the scalability of this solution as very high, about nine out of ten.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is scalable, offering numerous opportunities for scalability.
For the scalability of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, I would rate it a 10 until you remain in the Azure Cloud scalability framework.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is highly rated for stability and performance, with occasional minor issues often due to user or external factors.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is reliable and efficient, with high user satisfaction despite occasional issues with large datasets.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
I find the service stable as I have not encountered many issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks should improve visualization, integration, user experience, and scalability, addressing concerns about pricing, error messages, and onboarding.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users seek better integration, performance, simpler interfaces, affordability, and expanded support for IoT and machine learning.
Adjusting features like worker nodes and node utilization during cluster creation could mitigate these failures.
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.
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
There is a need for better documentation, particularly for customized tasks with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.
Databricks is a very rich solution, with numerous open sources and capabilities in terms of extract, transform, load, database query, and so forth.
 

Setup Cost

Databricks offers flexible, often expensive pricing, mitigated by cloud deployment and tiered licensing, with varied user cost experiences.
Azure Synapse Analytics is costly yet appreciated for Microsoft integration, requiring careful cost management due to variable pricing.
It is not a cheap solution.
I think the price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very expensive, but that's not only for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics—it's for the cloud in general.
 

Valuable Features

Databricks offers an intuitive interface for data processing, integrating SQL, Python, and features like Delta Lake and MLflow.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides scalable, secure data processing with seamless integration, user-friendly operations, and Power BI compatibility.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers significant visibility, which helps us understand our usage more clearly.
For Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, the integration is the most valuable feature, meaning that whatever you need is fast and easy to use.
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Databricks is 8.9%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.4%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 ...
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...
How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
I think the price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very expensive, but that's not only for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics—it's for the cloud in general. The cloud is not cost-effective. I...
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.