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Databricks vs Palantir Foundry 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
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Palantir Foundry
Ranking in Data Management Platforms (DMP)
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (13th), IT Operations Analytics (8th), Supply Chain Analytics (1st), Cloud Data Integration (10th), Data Migration Appliances (3rd), Data and Analytics Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Management Platforms (DMP) category, the mindshare of Databricks is 6.7%. The mindshare of Palantir Foundry is 14.5%, down from 28.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Management Platforms (DMP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palantir Foundry14.5%
Databricks6.7%
Other78.8%
Data Management Platforms (DMP)
 

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.
BA
Associate Vice President at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Unified data workflows have empowered collaborative analytics and streamlined AI development
Regarding points for improvement for Palantir Foundry, I see that they are improving day by day. In the last one to two years, I have seen many improvements compared to the two years that I have worked on Palantir Foundry. There are many things that come up, but a few things are not intuitive enough. Now that we are in this AI phase, Palantir Foundry has created some wrappers around the models, allowing us to create using a no-code application, chatbots, and LLM functions. The problem is that interaction with outside applications can be difficult with the current setup that Palantir Foundry has. There are ways to do that, but it is not that intuitive, which is what I feel.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very easy to use."
"It can send out large data amounts."
"It's very simple to use Databricks Apache Spark."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use SQL directly with Databricks."
"Databricks allows me to automate the creation of a cluster, optimized for machine learning and construct AI machine learning models for the client."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"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."
"Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R."
"The interface is really user-friendly."
"This product has all the various components for getting data, transforming it and visually creating the dashboards without the need to integrate things and no need to check the compatibility."
"The security is also excellent. It's highly granular, so the admins have a high degree of control, and there are many levels of security. That worked well. You won't have an EDC unless you put everything onto the platform because it is its own isolated thing."
"I like the data onboarding to Palantir Foundry and ETL creation."
"The interface is really user-friendly."
"The predictive analytics capability within Palantir Foundry impacts financial forecasting strategies through its AIP functionality, which includes numerous pre-built models, LLMs, and data science application libraries."
"Palantir Foundry is a robust platform that has really strong plugin connectors and provides features for real-time integration."
"Based on my huge experience with Palantir Foundry, I find that starting from the data connection to the end user application, there is a tool for everyone."
 

Cons

"I would like it if Databricks made it easier to set up a project."
"Anyone who doesn't know SQL may find the product difficult to work with."
"However, my team tells me there are limitations with streaming events. The connectors work with a small set of platforms."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio."
"While Databricks is generally a robust solution, I have noticed a limitation with debugging in the Delta Live Table, which could be improved."
"It would be better if it were faster. It can be slow, and it can be super fast for big data."
"I would like to see more documentation in terms of how an end-user could use it, and users like me can easily try it and implement use cases."
"However, the platform could become easier to use."
"The solution could use more online documentation for new users."
"Some error messages can be very cryptic."
"The problem is that interaction with outside applications can be difficult with the current setup that Palantir Foundry has."
"It would be helpful to build applications based on Azure functions or web apps in Palantir Foundry."
"There are some issues with scalability because when we are using a really large dataset, the system is rather slow."
"It requires a lot of manual work and is very time-consuming to get to a functional point."
"The one area where improvement could be made is the cost of the solution which is quite expensive."
"The data lineage was challenging. It's hard to track data from the sources as it moves through stages. Informatica EDC can easily capture and report it because it talks to the metadata. This is generated across those various staging points."
 

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."
"The solution is affordable."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
"The solution is based on a licensing model."
"The pricing depends on the usage itself."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
"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’s pricing is high."
"Palantir Foundry is an expensive solution."
"Palantir Foundry has different pricing models that can be negotiated."
"It's expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise9
 

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 Palantir Foundry?
Regarding points for improvement for Palantir Foundry, I see that they are improving day by day. In the last one to two years, I have seen many improvements compared to the two years that I have wo...
What is your primary use case for Palantir Foundry?
There are several use cases that we are working on with Palantir Foundry. The first thing is for data model creation for all our data engineering pipelines. That is one use case. Palantir Foundry a...
What advice do you have for others considering Palantir Foundry?
The visualization part in Palantir Foundry works for me at least if I want to see how the data is structured and for an initial analysis, but I would say it is not as matured as Power BI or Tableau...
 

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
Merck KGaA, Airbus, Ferrari,United States Intelligence Community, United States Department of Defense
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Palantir Foundry and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.