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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
10
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 February 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 8.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 14.1%, up from 9.9% 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow."
"It offers good stability."
"Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This"
"The most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration."
"MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature."
"It is a stable product."
"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."
"Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems."
"Its lightweight and fast processing are valuable."
"The solution is an impressive tool for data migration and integration."
"I like the ability to use workspaces with other colleagues because you can work together even without seeing the other team's job."
"Databricks allows me to automate the creation of a cluster, optimized for machine learning and construct AI machine learning models for the client."
"Having one solution for everything, from data engineering to machine learning, is beneficial since everything comes under one hood."
"We are completely satisfied with the ease of connecting to different sources of data or pocket files in the search"
"The solution is easy to use and has a quick start-up time due to being on the cloud."
"The ease of use and its accessibility are valuable."
 

Cons

"The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available."
"The product's schema support needs enhancement. It will help enhance integration with many kinds of languages of programming languages, especially for environments using languages like .NET."
"It would be really helpful if Amazon MSK could provide a single installation that covers all the servers."
"Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence."
"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."
"In my opinion, there are areas in Amazon MSK that could be improved, particularly in terms of configuration. Initially setting it up and getting it connected was quite challenging. The naming conventions for policies were updated by AWS, and some were undocumented, leading to confusion with outdated materials. It took us weeks of trial and error before discovering new methods through hidden tutorials and official documentation."
"It should be more flexible, integration-wise."
"It does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster."
"Databricks has a lack of debuggers, and it would be good to see more components."
"Overall it's a good product, however, it doesn't do well against any individual best-of-breed products."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio. When I create a data frame or a table, R Studio provides a preview of the data. In R Studio, I can see that it created a table with so many columns or rows. Then I can click on it and open a preview of that data."
"The interface of Databricks could be easier to use when compared to other solutions. It is not easy for non-data scientists. The user interface is important before we had to write code manually and as solutions move to "No code AI" it is critical that the interface is very good."
"There would also be benefits if more options were available for workers, or the clusters of the two points."
"One area of improvement is the Databricks File System (DBFS), where command-line challenges arise when accessing files. Standardization of file paths on the system could help, as engineers sometimes struggle."
"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."
"CI/CD needs additional leverage and support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."
"The platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."
"When you create a complete enterprise-driven architecture that is deployable on an enterprise scale, I would say that the prices of Amazon MSK and Confluent Platform become comparable."
"The solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."
"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
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?
From AWS, I would consider more MSK schema validation is needed. It is easy to integrate if you have an application, but on-topic integration is more complex. You can do it with EvenBridge very eas...
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
I have used Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK in my company. We are not using it for analytics and it is more for CDC processes, so we change the capture processes. It is used to extract data from a d...
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: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.