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Apache NiFi vs Apache Spark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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

Apache NiFi
Ranking in Compute Service
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (2nd), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Apache NiFi is 9.1%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.6%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Spark11.6%
Apache NiFi9.1%
Other79.3%
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Bharghava Raghavendra Beesa - PeerSpot reviewer
The tool enables effective data transformation and integration
There are some areas for improvement, particularly with record-level tasks that take a bit of time. The quality of JSON data processing could be improved, as JSON workloads require manual conversions without a specific process. Enhancing features related to alerting would be helpful, including mobile alerts for pipeline issues. Integration with mobile devices for error alerts would simplify information delivery.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature has been the range of clients and the range of connectors that we could use."
"It is highly effective for handling real-time data by working with APIs for immediate and continuous data extraction."
"The initial setup is very easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, where one point is difficult, and ten points are easy."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"The user interface is good and makes it easy to design very popular workflows."
"We can integrate the tool with other applications easily."
"Visually, this is a good product."
"The most valuable features of this solution are ease of use and implementation."
"The most crucial feature for us is the streaming capability. It serves as a fundamental aspect that allows us to exert control over our operations."
"AI libraries are the most valuable. They provide extensibility and usability. Spark has a lot of connectors, which is a very important and useful feature for AI. You need to connect a lot of points for AI, and you have to get data from those systems. Connectors are very wide in Spark. With a Spark cluster, you can get fast results, especially for AI."
"ETL and streaming capabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the Fault Tolerance and easy binding with other processes like Machine Learning, graph analytics."
"It provides a scalable machine learning library."
"This solution provides a clear and convenient syntax for our analytical tasks."
"I like Apache Spark's flexibility the most. Before, we had one server that would choke up. With the solution, we can easily add more nodes when needed. The machine learning models are also really helpful. We use them to predict energy theft and find infrastructure problems."
"One of the key features is that Apache Spark is a distributed computing framework. You can help multiple slaves and distribute the workload between them."
 

Cons

"More features must be added to the product."
"The use case templates could be more precise to typical business needs."
"There should be a better way to integrate a development environment with local tools."
"There are some claims that NiFi is cloud-native but we have tested it, and it's not."
"The tool should incorporate more tutorials for advanced use cases. It has tutorials for simple use cases."
"I think the UI interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"We run many jobs, and there are already large tables. When we do not control NiFi on time, all reports fail for the day. So it's pretty slow to control, and it has to be improved."
"There is room for improvement in integration with SSO. For example, NiFi does not have any integration with SSO. And if I want to give some kind of rollback access control across the organization. That is not possible."
"More ML based algorithms should be added to it, to make it algorithmic-rich for developers."
"In data analysis, you need to take real-time data from different data sources. You need to process this in a subsecond, do the transformation in a subsecond, and all that."
"There could be enhancements in optimization techniques, as there are some limitations in this area that could be addressed to further refine Spark's performance."
"The graphical user interface (UI) could be a bit more clear. It's very hard to figure out the execution logs and understand how long it takes to send everything. If an execution is lost, it's not so easy to understand why or where it went. I have to manually drill down on the data processes which takes a lot of time. Maybe there could be like a metrics monitor, or maybe the whole log analysis could be improved to make it easier to understand and navigate."
"Its UI can be better. Maintaining the history server is a little cumbersome, and it should be improved. I had issues while looking at the historical tags, which sometimes created problems. You have to separately create a history server and run it. Such things can be made easier. Instead of separately installing the history server, it can be made a part of the whole setup so that whenever you set it up, it becomes available."
"Apart from the restrictions that come with its in-memory implementation. It has been improved significantly up to version 3.0, which is currently in use."
"Apache Spark provides very good performance The tuning phase is still tricky."
"When you first start using this solution, it is common to run into memory errors when you are dealing with large amounts of data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I used the tool's free version."
"We use the free version of Apache NiFi."
"The solution is open-source."
"It's an open-source solution."
"Apache Spark is not too cheap. You have to pay for hardware and Cloudera licenses. Of course, there is a solution with open source without Cloudera."
"We are using the free version of the solution."
"The solution is affordable and there are no additional licensing costs."
"Licensing costs can vary. For instance, when purchasing a virtual machine, you're asked if you want to take advantage of the hybrid benefit or if you prefer the license costs to be included upfront by the cloud service provider, such as Azure. If you choose the hybrid benefit, it indicates you already possess a license for the operating system and wish to avoid additional charges for that specific VM in Azure. This approach allows for a reduction in licensing costs, charging only for the service and associated resources."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"It is quite expensive. In fact, it accounts for almost 50% of the cost of our entire project."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
9%
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 Business3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache NiFi?
Apache NiFi is open-source and free. Its integration with systems like Cloudera can be expensive, but Apache NiFi itself presents the best pricing as a standalone tool.
What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?
The logging system of Apache NiFi needs improvement. It is difficult to debug compared to Airflow ( /products/apache-airflow-reviews ), where task details and issues are clear. With Apache NiFi, I ...
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, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Macquarie Telecom Group, Dovestech, Slovak Telekom, Looker, Hastings Group
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 Apache NiFi vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,623 professionals have used our research since 2012.