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Amazon EMR vs Apache Spark 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Amazon EMR delivers significant cost savings and efficiency, with some users achieving up to 20% savings and positive ROI.
Sentiment score
6.6
Apache Spark enhances machine learning, cutting operational costs by up to 50%, with efficiency reliant on resources and expertise.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR support is generally proactive and responsive, though user experiences vary, especially during open-source integrations.
Sentiment score
5.9
Apache Spark support feedback varies, with mixed reviews on community forums, vendor support, and documentation adequacy.
We get all call support, screen sharing support, and immediate support, so there are no problems.
They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon EMR is scalable and versatile, though some face resource speed issues and performance differences between environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
Apache Spark excels in scalability, efficiently handling large data workloads with ease, though it requires skilled infrastructure management.
Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EMR is stable and reliable, with high availability, but could improve slightly to address occasional concerns.
Sentiment score
7.5
Apache Spark is generally stable, trusted by companies; newer versions enhance reliability, though memory issues may arise without proper configuration.
Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.
Apache Spark resolves many problems in the MapReduce solution and Hadoop, such as the inability to run effective Python or machine learning algorithms.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR requires improved user-friendliness, stability, monitoring, integration, and pricing adjustments to enhance performance, scalability, and compatibility.
Apache Spark requires improvements in scalability, usability, documentation, memory efficiency, real-time processing, and broader language support for better performance.
The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2.
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR pricing is usage-based, perceived higher, but optimizable through instance management and auto-scaling for Big Data tasks.
Apache Spark is cost-effective but may incur expenses from hardware, cloud resources, or commercial support, impacting deployment costs.
Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 instances, instance sizes, Kubernetes, Docker services, storage, and data transfers.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EMR offers scalable, cost-effective data processing with easy integration, advanced features, and robust management on a cloud-based infrastructure.
Apache Spark offers fast in-memory processing, scalable analytics, MLlib for machine learning, SQL support, and seamless integration with languages.
Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.
Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop.
Not all solutions can make this data fast enough to be used, except for solutions such as Apache Spark Structured Streaming.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Ranking in Hadoop
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (13th)
Apache Spark
Ranking in Hadoop
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (4th), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 12.8%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 19.0%, up from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hadoop Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Spark19.0%
Amazon EMR12.8%
Other68.2%
Hadoop
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless data integration enhances reporting efficiency and an easy setup
Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources. The service charges are based on processing only, depending on the resources used, which can help save money. It is easy to integrate with other services for storage, allowing data to be shifted to cheaper storage based on usage.
Omar Khaled - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowering data consolidation and fast decision-making with efficient big data processing
I can improve the organization's functions by taking less time to make decisions. To make the right decision, you need the right data, and a solution can provide this by hiring talent and employees who can consolidate data from different sources and organize it. Not all solutions can make this data fast enough to be used, except for solutions such as Apache Spark Structured Streaming. To make the right decision, you should have both accurate and fast data. Apache Spark itself is similar to the Python programming language. Python is a language with many libraries for mathematics and machine learning. Apache Spark is the solution, and within it, you have PySpark, which is the API for Apache Spark to write and run Python code. Within it, there are many APIs, including SQL APIs, allowing you to write SQL code within a Python function in Apache Spark. You can also use Apache Spark Structured Streaming and machine learning APIs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EMR?
Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
Compared to others, Amazon seems efficient and is considered good for Big Data workloads. Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 ( /products/amazon-ec2-reviews ) instances...
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ) buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integrati...
What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
Regarding Apache Spark, I have only used Apache Spark Structured Streaming, not the machine learning components. I am uncertain about specific improvements needed today. However, after five years, ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.