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Amazon MSK vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
7.1
Amazon MSK provides positive ROI by reducing integration time, minimizing licensing costs, and supporting flexible, cost-efficient experimentation with large data volumes.
Sentiment score
6.6
Organizations experience mixed returns from Databricks, with benefits from cost savings and efficiency, but challenges in initial migration.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon MSK customer service is generally praised for accessibility and responsiveness, but expertise and cost can vary by plan.
Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks customer service is generally effective with prompt responses, though some report issues mainly with third-party support channels.
Amazon's support is excellent.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon MSK offers efficient manual scalability, rated six to nine by users, suitable for different organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for efficient scalability and cloud compatibility, allowing easy resource adjustment across diverse projects and industries.
The functionality for scaling comes out of the box and is very effective.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon MSK is stable with high user ratings, though concerns exist due to its newness and some Windows-specific issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is stable and efficient for large data, with minor issues during updates and occasional connectivity challenges.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Cluster failure is one of the biggest weaknesses I notice in our Databricks.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon MSK needs better integration, configuration ease, improved documentation, cost reduction, and feature enhancements to compete and integrate effectively.
Databricks users desire improved UI, enhanced data visualization, better integration, clearer error messages, robust support, and comprehensive documentation.
The increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings.
It would be beneficial to have utilities where code snippets are readily available.
Adjusting features like worker nodes and node utilization during cluster creation could mitigate these failures.
We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon MSK is cost-effective for large workloads but can be expensive for smaller use cases, needing careful evaluation.
Databricks pricing depends on usage, with flexibility in licensing, and can vary in competitiveness compared to other solutions.
Once we started using Kafka, our cloud costs rose by 50% to 60%.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon MSK offers seamless AWS integration, cost-efficiency, simplified setup, and reliable performance for CDC pipelines and asynchronous data collection.
Databricks provides a unified platform for data engineering, machine learning, seamless cloud integration, and robust data management capabilities.
The scalability and usability are quite remarkable.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
The notebooks and the ability to share them with collaborators are valuable, as multiple developers can use a single cluster.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 7.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 14.3%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

FNU AKSHANSH - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's automatic
We don't have many use cases involving ingesting large amounts of data and scaling up and down. We have a clear understanding of our data volume, which remains relatively constant throughout the week. While we're aware of other features Amazon MSK offers, we feel confident in our current setup. If our requirements change significantly in the future, we'll reassess our needs and consider adopting Amazon MSK.
ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon MSK?
Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems.
What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?
The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings. There were no other notable issues.
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
We used Amazon MSK to manage high-volume third-party data entering our system. It served as a buffer when our system was unable to consume data at high speeds in real-time. The data initially went ...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MSK vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.