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Databricks vs Starburst Galaxy 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 Science Platforms
1st
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (6th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
9th
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
12th
Average Rating
9.8
Reviews Sentiment
1.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 9.3%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks9.3%
Starburst Galaxy1.2%
Other89.5%
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.
reviewer2750097 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Business Intelligence at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Unified data access improves analytics and simplifies complex processes
I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs. I also want support for more connectors such as Kinesis and Firehose, support for more file types such as Avro and JSON, and object storage message queue integration for object storage integrations. A single view of query execution and optimization details, rather than needing to toggle between the Galaxy and Trino UI, would be helpful. Additionally, enhanced control over account and environment variables that would be available in the Enterprise edition would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Databricks has improved my organization by allowing us to transform data from sources to a different format and feed that to the analytics, business intelligence, and reporting teams. This tool makes it easy to do those kinds of things."
"One of the features provides nice interactive clusters, or compute instances that you don't really need to manage often."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The capacity of use of the different types of coding is valuable. Databricks also has good performance because it is running in spark extra storage, meaning the performance and the capacity use different kinds of codes."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"Databricks is based on a Spark cluster and it is fast. Performance-wise, it is great."
"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."
"The solution is very simple and stable."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."
"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
 

Cons

"Implementation of Databricks is still very code heavy."
"Databricks has added some alerts and query functionality into their SQL persona, but the whole SQL persona, which is like a role, needs a lot of development. The alerts are not very flexible, and the query interface itself is not as polished as the notebook interface that is used through the data science and machine learning persona. It is clunky at present."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"The Databricks cluster can be improved."
"The solution has some scalability and integration limitations when consolidating legacy systems."
"Databricks can improve by making the documentation better."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio. When I create a data frame or a table, R Studio provides a preview of the data. In R Studio, I can see that it created a table with so many columns or rows. Then I can click on it and open a preview of that data."
"CI/CD needs additional leverage and support."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."
"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven 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."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"The pricing depends on the usage itself."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
University
8%
 

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 Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

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 Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace. On the AWS side this ...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
I use the solution for processing large simulation datasets into aggregated datasets that can either be used for real-time data analysis or stored for later analysis.
 

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. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.