Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon EMR vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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 Cloud Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.9%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

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.
Matthew Spieth - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial real-time analytics, simple setup, and useful tutorials
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve its compatibility with Visual Studio. One of the challenges for people moving from an on-premise to a cloud solution, such as Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, is that you're constantly working in a browser. There are people that have been working for decades on desktop applications. For them to start working in a browser, it's quite a change. Allowing people to work and do their work inside Visual Studio than in the browser, would be a large advantage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are using applications, such as Splunk, Livy, Hadoop, and Spark. We are using all of these applications in Amazon EMR and they're helping us a lot."
"The security of the managed workflow and the managed services are the best features for us. Since we inherited their security model and it's all managed services, those are the key benefits for our clients."
"The project management is very streamlined."
"The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions."
"Amazon EMR's most valuable features are processing speed and data storage capacity."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance."
"Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources."
"We've had a good experience with technical support in general."
"Its seamless integration with Azure services is most valuable. If somebody wants to use all Azure services, it is the best solution."
"The product is very user friendly."
"The main advantage of using this solution is its ability to scale and handle very large amounts of data, in the petabyte range."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is that it's native only for Azure, so you get better performance and there's no issue. To explain further, many different types of data come, in particular, structured and unstructured data. For audit purposes, there's also unstructured data, so the most important aspect is that with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you have the capability of using both technologies, meaning that you can use or mix structured and unstructured data which is important. This can also be done in Hadoop, and on other platforms, so you have everything in one place. You don't have to worry about how to manage both structured and unstructured data and where to store information. With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can take care of everything, particularly in Azure. The solution also provides you with many features apart from analytics, for example, storage which makes it better."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are its serverless flexibility and complete power have allowed me to explore various different use cases. While I am not an expert in the product, my experience in programming in Databricks has shown me that Microsoft's investments in Synapse could potentially lead to it becoming a complete replacement for Databricks in the future."
"The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB."
"The solution offers strong scalability opportunities."
 

Cons

"The problem for us is it starts very slow."
"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"The initial setup was time-consuming."
"The most complicated thing is configuring to the cluster and ensure it's running correctly."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences."
"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."
"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."
"It would be of interest to improve things like the web service integration and availability in terms of being easy to create internal web services in the database."
"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."
"Non-structured data is unavailable with this product."
"With respect to what needs to be improved, concurrent connectivity has some limitations."
"Integration with other vendors has limitations and could be improved."
"I would like to see version control implemented into the data warehouse."
"The solution should offer a serverless model like Snowflake."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
"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 no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"We only have to pay for what we use in the solution. It's easy for the customers. It's not more than some companies, not more than 300 to 400 users. They do not need to buy other license products, such as SAP B1, or analytics tools in the market, such as Tableau."
"My company pays for the license and I am not sure about the price."
"Microsoft's pricing is relatively high, and it varies according to the extent of our usage. The pricing is directly tied to our consumption. This decision is ultimately a business choice."
"I think Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is priced well, and I would rate the price at eight out of ten."
"Price is dependent of the use case of the customer. Customers are not likely to only use this as an individual platform/database, they are likely to bundle it with the Azure stack."
"The price of the package not expensive and depends on how much it is used."
"They are cost aggressive, and it integrates well with other Microsoft tools."
"This solution starts at €1000.00 a month for just the basics and can go up to €300,000.00 per month for the fastest version."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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.
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.
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.
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?
The financial aspect, including pricing and cost reduction, is not something I focus on.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.