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Apache Spark Streaming 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

Apache Spark Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
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 April 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Spark Streaming is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 14.6%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

AbhishekGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy integration, beneficial auto-scaling, and good open-sourced support community
The service structure of Apache Spark Streaming can improve. There are a lot of issues with memory management and latency. There is no real-time analytics. We recommend it for the use cases where there is a five-second latency, but not for a millisecond, an IOT-based, or the detection anomaly-based. Flink as a service is much better. Apache Spark Streaming does not have auto-tuning. A customer needs to invest a lot, in terms of management and maintenance.
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

"As an open-source solution, using it is basically free."
"Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows."
"Apache Spark's capabilities for machine learning are quite extensive and can be used in a low-code way."
"The platform’s most valuable feature for processing real-time data is its ability to handle continuous data streams."
"It's the fastest solution on the market with low latency data on data transformations."
"Spark Streaming is critical, quite stable, full-featured, and scalable."
"The solution is very stable and reliable."
"The solution is better than average and some of the valuable features include efficiency and stability."
"The ease of use and its accessibility are valuable."
"There are good features for turning off clusters."
"Databricks' most valuable feature is the data transformation through PySpark."
"I like that Databricks is a unified platform that lets you do streaming and batch processing in the same place. You can do analytics, too. They have added something called Databricks SQL Analytics, allowing users to connect to the data lake to perform analytics. Databricks also will enable you to share your data securely. It integrates with your reporting system as well."
"We are completely satisfied with the ease of connecting to different sources of data or pocket files in the search"
"I work in the data science field and I found Databricks to be very useful."
"Imageflow is a visual tool that helps make it easier for business people to understand complex workflows."
"Databricks allows me to automate the creation of a cluster, optimized for machine learning and construct AI machine learning models for the client."
 

Cons

"We don't have enough experience to be judgmental about its flaws."
"We would like to have the ability to do arbitrary stateful functions in Python."
"Integrating event-level streaming capabilities could be beneficial."
"The cost and load-related optimizations are areas where the tool lacks and needs improvement."
"The debugging aspect could use some improvement."
"The solution itself could be easier to use."
"The initial setup is quite complex."
"There could be an improvement in the area of the user configuration section, it should be less developer-focused and more business user-focused."
"The product could be improved regarding the delay when switching to higher-performing virtual machines compared to other platforms."
"The product cannot be integrated with a popular coding IDE."
"We'd like a more visual dashboard for analysis It needs better UI."
"It would be very helpful if Databricks could integrate with platforms in addition to Azure."
"I would like it if Databricks made it easier to set up a project."
"Databricks' technical support takes a while to respond and could be improved."
"The ability to customize our own pipelines would enhance the product, similar to what's possible using ML files in Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"There are no direct connectors — they are very limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, or not cost-effective, and ten is cheap, I rate the price a seven."
"People pay for Apache Spark Streaming as a service."
"Spark is an affordable solution, especially considering its open-source nature."
"I was using the open-source community version, which was self-hosted."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"The solution requires a subscription."
"It is an expensive tool. The licensing model is a pay-as-you-go one."
"The basic version of this solution is now open-source, so there are no license costs involved. However, there is a charge for any advanced functionality and this can be quite expensive."
"There are different versions."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
6%
University
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 Apache Spark Streaming?
Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark Streaming?
We don't have enough experience to be judgmental about its flaws, as we've only used stable features like batch micro-batch. Integration poses no problem; however, I don't use some features and can...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark Streaming?
We use Spark Streaming in a micro-batch region. It's not a full real-time system, but it offers high performance and low latency.
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...
 

Also Known As

Spark Streaming
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, eBay Inc.
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark Streaming vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.