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Firebolt 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Firebolt
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Firebolt is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.2%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics6.2%
Firebolt0.7%
Other93.1%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Iqbal Hossain Raju - PeerSpot reviewer
Can quickly query it to generate quick results
We have used Snowflake before. We support both. Firebolt has better performance, executing queries much quicker than Snowflake. However, Snowflake has more functionality. Depending on the client's needs, we can recommend the best option. Firebolt is a relatively new technology. Snowflake has many functionalities. Firebolt does not support unloading data to S3. There is no built-in way to do this in Firebolt. Alternatively, the data can be retrieved using API calls and loaded to S3 manually. Data can be unloaded to S3 directly using Snowflake. Firebolt significantly improves our performance over Snowflake because it takes less time to execute queries. This is especially important for our company because we use some KPIs that require fast loading times.
Joy Maitra - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported data pipeline development but still requires better integration and support
The best feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the notebook functionality; it provides a very good interface, and we can easily do our experiments, POCs, and check things before migration or deployment to higher environments such as from development to SIT and then production. The deployment process is also much smoother. Driving data-driven insights in my organization depends upon the preparation of the data. If your data is not good, then insights won't be good, and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics helps in preparing your data, so it is very helpful. I find Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics' native data lake support beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Firebolt is fast for analytical purposes. For example, we have analytical data in our data warehouse, and Firebolt can quickly query it to generate quick results."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are how easy and quick it is to set up the linked services."
"I like its performance. It is well-structured and offers a lot of practical options. Because of the visual design of the product, it is very easy to find icons and other visual elements. It took me more than two weeks to understand how it works. I had an intensive training session to understand it, which was enough. It was not hard to understand how it works."
"The whole solution is interesting for us."
"The most valuable feature is that you can suspend the computer if it is not being used, which means that you don't incur costs."
"It is a highly stable solution and it's easy to use."
"The initial setup process is straightforward."
"Its scalability and ease of use are valuable. It is fairly simple for a tool that's that powerful. If you have a background in Microsoft SQL Server, it is a very easy-to-transition path."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the pipeline that is the ETL tool. It's very well designed and is overall very good. We usually don't use the ETL tool in Databricks, but we use the ETL tool in this solution."
 

Cons

"Firebolt's engine takes a long time to start because it needs to make engine calls."
"The configuration for things like high-availability could be more user-friendly for non-technical users."
"The macro functions, though useful, are not totally user-friendly. Some people have difficulties in learning them."
"One area that could be improved is the schema management."
"In our company, we always want to improve our data management, including how to manage structured and unstructured data."
"The linked services can be improved. We can create dynamic linked services to access a lot of databases but only those of the same type. For example, I can use the same linked services to access 11 SQL databases. However, if I have 11 SQL databases and five Oracle databases, I need two dynamic linked services. I cannot do it with only one linked service. The UI also needs to be improved. When I have used Azure Synapse for programming with PySpark, Scala, or .NET, for example, the UI has been unstable. If I open two notebooks for programming, one notebook will queue the session of the other."
"We'd like the solution to have more analytics capability."
"The solution should offer a serverless model like Snowflake."
"I'm not entirely happy with the billing model. I'm not entirely happy with how the enterprise services are pretty expensive, but that's about it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I understand that Synapse Analytics' pricing is lower than Informatica's."
"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can be costly, however, a cost-effective approach would be to purchase it in advance through reservation for either one or three years. This will significantly reduce the overall expenses incurred."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics can vary. Other solutions are typically fixed prices and a fixed cost regardless of usage, but this solution is based on usage or consumption."
"Pay for what you use"
"There is a cost calculator available online that allows you to input your entire scenario, and it will get back to you with information on what the costs are going to be."
"You have to be very careful with one specific service inside Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics which is called the Sequel Data Warehouse Dedicated. It is very reliable and performs well, but it's expensive. You need to define the tier well because you can choose between several tiers and you have to define which suits your needs and not overperform the tier because it's quite expensive."
"The costs are billed such that we pay for what we use, which is a good thing."
"The pricing is quite reasonable in comparison to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Firebolt?
Firebolt is fast for analytical purposes. For example, we have analytical data in our data warehouse, and Firebolt can quickly query it to generate quick results.
What needs improvement with Firebolt?
Firebolt's engine takes a long time to start because it needs to make engine calls. Currently, the data size of Firebolt is small. It can be increased.
What advice do you have for others considering Firebolt?
One way to retrieve data from firewalls is to add query parameters to the connection string. For example, you can use the REST API to retrieve the security query. Some firewalls have been deployed ...
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

No data available
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.