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Databricks vs Microsoft Fabric 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Ranking in Data Management Platforms (DMP)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Microsoft Fabric
Ranking in Data Management Platforms (DMP)
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Ankush-Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Software Engineer at Momentus
Unified analytics platform has simplified complex dashboards and supported secure data pipelines
One thing about Microsoft Fabric that I think could be improved is the potential confusion when working with real-time data versus normal batch loading. If you are dealing with real-time databases or data, you need to work with Event Hub and event streaming, but for normal batch processing, you can usually go ahead with the SQL warehouse or the data lakehouse. I recommend that Microsoft unify these processes, so using one source can meet both requirements. If I am working with real-time data and batched data, I should not have to manage two separate systems; instead of creating an Event Hub and a lakehouse, users could simply manage one house to handle both real-time analysis and batch processing, making it simpler and more user-friendly from both business and development perspectives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The time travel feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"One of the newest features brought into this solution provides you with a way to solve, deploy, and train models using the platform itself, or it can connect to your Azure Machine Learning in order to train, deploy, and productionalize some of the machine learning models."
"Of the available feature set, I like the Imageflow feature a lot."
"I think what I value is more about the technology itself because you don't need to have too much knowledge to be able to use the solution."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is its notebook. It's quite convenient to use, both terms of the research and the development and also the final deployment, I can just declare the spark jobs by the load tables. It's quite convenient."
"I work in the data science field and I found Databricks to be very useful."
"Databricks allowed us to go from non-existent insights (because the datasets were just too large) to immediate and rich insights once the datasets were ingested into our PySpark notebooks."
"Compared to other companies, they offer great support to their clients."
"The features and capabilities of Microsoft Fabric that I have found most useful include it being a uniform platform."
"The most valuable and useful feature I have found in Microsoft Fabric is data consistency, which is the top thing."
"The best feature Microsoft Fabric offers in my experience is the Dataflow."
 

Cons

"I think the aspects of Databricks that should be improved are that it could be faster and that I would like to be able to run direct queries from the server."
"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."
"Databricks is still having some stability issues."
"While Databricks is generally a robust solution, I have noticed a limitation with debugging in the Delta Live Table, which could be improved."
"Can be improved by including drag-and-drop features."
"The integration of data could be a bit better."
"It would be better if it were faster. It can be slow, and it can be super fast for big data."
"The biggest problem associated with the product is that it is quite pricey."
"In my experience, Microsoft Fabric is not stable."
"I think the Copilot usage in Microsoft Fabric can be improved."
"One thing about Microsoft Fabric that I think could be improved is the potential confusion when working with real-time data versus normal batch loading."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different versions."
"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're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."
"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."
"The basic version of this solution is now open-source, so there are no license costs involved. However, there is a charge for any advanced functionality and this can be quite expensive."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"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 billing of Databricks can be difficult and should improve."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise57
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with Microsoft Fabric?
I think Microsoft Fabric can be improved, but I feel that everything is adequate. Everything is acceptable regarding the needed improvements.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Fabric?
My main use case for Microsoft Fabric is data engineering. A specific example of something my team has used Microsoft Fabric for is to collect information from many sources and put it in the data w...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Fabric?
My advice to others looking into using Microsoft Fabric is that it is a good solution. I heard from the cloud infrastructure team about this product. I do not have any additional thoughts about Mic...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Microsoft Fabric and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.