No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Databricks vs VAST Data comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
95
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
VAST Data
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (27th), File and Object Storage (18th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Databricks and VAST Data aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 9.3%, up 8.8% compared to last year.
VAST Data, on the other hand, focuses on NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays, holds 6.0% mindshare, up 6.0% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks9.3%
Snowflake15.4%
Teradata9.2%
Other66.1%
Cloud Data Warehouse
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VAST Data6.0%
Dell PowerStore13.0%
NetApp AFF9.8%
Other71.2%
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
 

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.
Alan Powers - PeerSpot reviewer
HPC CTO at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Stability-wise, a device that has been up and running for years
The failover capability and resiliency are some of the solution's valuable features. The big thing is resilience because it has richer coding in it, so multiple devices can't fail. Also, one can still access a number of CBoxes that can allow one to access their file system. Once a device fails, it fails the transparency of the end-user, and it just starts using another resource. The encryption capability, the snapshots, along with a whole bunch of features make the tool valuable. VAST Data keeps adding more and more features all the time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scalability is one of the main features of Databricks."
"The fast data loading process and data storage capabilities are great."
"I don't think you can find any other tool or any other service that is faster than Databricks."
"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."
"The ease of use and its accessibility are valuable."
"What I like about Databricks is that it's one of the most popular platforms that give access to folks who are trying not just to do exploratory work on the data but also go ahead and build advanced modeling and machine learning on top of that."
"Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed."
"Databricks gives you the flexibility of using several programming languages independently or in combination to build models."
"This has been one of the most reliable storage systems that I have ever used."
"The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations."
 

Cons

"Sometimes we experience issues connecting our database to Databricks. There are no direct connectors — they are very limited."
"<p>My experience with the pricing and licensing model is that it remains relatively expensive. Though it's less expensive than AWS, we still need a more cost-effective solution.</p>"
"The pricing of Databricks could be cheaper."
"We often use a single cluster to ingest Databricks, which Databricks doesn't recommend. They suggest using a no-cluster solution like job clusters. This can be overwhelming for us because we started smaller."
"I believe that this product could be improved by becoming more user-friendly."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"The ability to customize our own pipelines would enhance the product, similar to what's possible using ML files in Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"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."
"The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement."
"The write performance could be improved because it is less than half of the read performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"Databricks is a very expensive solution. Pricing is an area that could definitely be improved. They could provide a lower end compute and probably reduce the price."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."
"The billing of Databricks can be difficult and should improve."
"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."
"We acquired VAST Data as a one-time, capital purchase."
"Price-wise, VAST Data is not the cheapest, not the most expensive one."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise60
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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
Norwest Venture Partners, General Dynamics Information Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Google, Databricks and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.