Amazon EMR vs Hortonworks Data Platform comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Cloudera are both solutions in the Hadoop category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0, while Cloudera is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 13.6% mindshare in H, compared to Cloudera’s 3.4% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Cloudera users who would recommend it.

Amazon EMR

Read 22 Amazon EMR reviews

1,215 Views
1,041 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Hortonworks Data Platform

Read 25 Hortonworks Data Platform reviews

319 Views
198 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

Hortonworks Data Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon EMR and Hortonworks Data Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Hadoop solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EMR vs. Hortonworks Data Platform Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Hortonworks Data Platform

January 2025

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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

Amazon EMR

Ranking in Hadoop

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (12th)

Hortonworks Data Platform

Ranking in Hadoop

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (14th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 13.6%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hortonworks Data Platform is 3.4%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Hadoop

Featured Reviews

Prashant Singh

Vice President -Product Management at Paytm

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.

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Prashant Singh

Vice President -Product Management at Paytm

A good technology with an easy setup but is at end of life

The solution is fairly simple to set up. It's not too complex or difficult. If you know the solution, it's easy. However, there is a learning curve. If you don't know anything about it, it can be more complex. You can typically deploy it within a week. We have five or six people capable of handling a deployment.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution helps us manage huge volumes of data."

"The project management is very streamlined."

"One of the valuable features about this solution is that it's managed services, so it's pretty stable, and scalable as much as you wish. It has all the necessary distributions. With some additional work, it's also possible to change to a Spark version with the latest version of EMR. It also has Hudi, so we are leveraging Apache Hudi on EMR for change data capture, so then it comes out-of-the-box in EMR."

"This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions."

"It allows users to access the data through a web interface."

"The solution is scalable."

More Amazon EMR pros

"We use it for data science activities."

"The Hortonworks solution is so stable. It is working as a production system, without any error, without any downtime. If I have downtime, it is mostly caused by the hardware of the computers."

"The scalability is the key reason why we are on this platform."

"It is a scalable platform."

"Distributed computing, secure containerization, and governance capabilities are the most valuable features."

"Now, using this solution, it is much cheaper to have all of the data available for searching, not in real-time, but whenever there is a pending request."

"Ranger for security; with Ranger we can manager user’s permissions/access controls very easily."

"The data platform is pretty neat. The workflow is also really good."

More Hortonworks Data Platform pros

Cons

"Modules and strategies should be better handled and notified early in advance."

"The dashboard management could be better. Right now, it's lacking a bit."

"We don't have much control. If we have multiple users, if they want to scale up, the cost will go and increase and we don't know how we can restrict that price part."

"Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences."

"There is room for improvement in pricing."

"The legacy versions of the solution are not supported in the new versions."

"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."

"There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange."

More Amazon EMR cons

"More information could be there to simplify the process of running the product."

"I work a lot with banking, IT and communications customers. Hortonworks must improve or must upgrade their services for these sectors."

"Deleting any service requires a lot of clean up, unlike Cloudera."

"I would like to see more support for containers such as Docker and OpenShift."

"Since Cloudera acquired HDP, it's been bundled with CBH and HDP. However, the biggest challenge is cloud storage integration with Azure, GCP, and AWS."

"Security and workload management need improvement."

"It would also be nice if there were less coding involved."

"The cost of the solution is high and there is room for improvement."

More Hortonworks Data Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."

"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."

"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."

"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."

More Amazon EMR pricing and cost advice

"Currently, we are using the product in a sandbox environment, and there is no licensing. We might choose a licensing option once we get the results."

"It is priced well and it is affordable"

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?

The cost of Amazon EMR is a little bit expensive, especially considering the support package, which includes a gold package.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?

Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences. This aspect could be improved to make them more efficient.

See all answers

What do you like most about Hortonworks Data Platform?

Distributed computing, secure containerization, and governance capabilities are the most valuable features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hortonworks Data Platform?

I haven't done a price analysis specifically for HDP. However, when it was first introduced as Hadoop 2.0, there were a few use cases where the price was quite high. It was particularly expensive f...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Hortonworks Data Platform?

Since Cloudera acquired HDP, it's been bundled with CBH and HDP. However, the biggest challenge is cloud storage integration with Azure, GCP, and AWS. These platforms offer competitive storage solu...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 37% of the time

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Amazon EMR

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Amazon EMR

Compared 8% of the time

Apache Spark vs Amazon EMR

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Amazon EMR

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon EMR Competitors

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric vs Hortonworks Data Platform

Compared 52% of the time

IBM Spectrum Computing vs Hortonworks Data Platform

Compared 48% of the time

More Hortonworks Data Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR

February 2025

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

Hortonworks Data Platform

February 2025

Download Hortonworks Data Platform product report

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

Hortonworks, HDP

Overview

Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) is a web service that makes it easy to quickly and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. Amazon EMR simplifies big data processing, providing a managed Hadoop framework that makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective for you to distribute and process vast amounts of your data across dynamically scalable Amazon EC2 instances.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The Hortonworks Data Platform is acclaimed for its robust handling of big data, offering scalable solutions for data storage optimization and advanced analytics. Users benefit from its seamless processing of both streaming and batch data, and efficient maintenance of data lakes for improved governance. Key features include comprehensive security and seamless integration with existing analytics tools, significantly enhancing organizational efficiency and decision-making capabilities.

Cloudera

Sample Customers

Yelp

Mayo Clinic, Symantec, Progressive Insurance, Noble Energy, Cardinal Health, Rogers, Mercy, Neustar, TRUECar, T-Mobile

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Hortonworks Data Platform

January 2025

Free Report: Amazon EMR vs. Hortonworks Data Platform

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