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

Apache Spark vs SAP HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Compute Service (4th), Java Frameworks (2nd)
SAP HANA
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (4th), Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, able to expand, and handle large amounts of data well
We use batch processing. It works well with our formats and file versions. There's a lot of functionality. In our pipeline each hour, we make a copy of data from MongoDB, of the changes from MongoDB to some specific file. Each time pipeline copied all of the data, it would do it each time without changes to all of the tables. Tables have a lot of data, and in the last MongoDB version, there is a possibility to read only changed data. This reduced the cost and configuration of the cluster, and we saved about $150,000. The solution is scalable. It's a stable product.
Jayarami Reddy Pujeri - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive system with real-time analytics for versatile industry applications
Our primary use case is working with various clients in industries such as pharmaceuticals and other services. We support clients as implementers of SAP HANA, providing expertise in functionality, finance, logistics, and processes The solution is very user-friendly and supports all kinds of…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product’s most valuable features are lazy evaluation and workload distribution."
"Apache Spark provides a very high-quality implementation of distributed data processing."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Spark is its memory processing because it processes data over RAM rather than disk, which is much more efficient and fast."
"The product's deployment phase is easy."
"The memory processing engine is the solution's most valuable aspect. It processes everything extremely fast, and it's in the cluster itself. It acts as a memory engine and is very effective in processing data correctly."
"Spark is used for transformations from large volumes of data, and it is usefully distributed."
"Provides a lot of good documentation compared to other solutions."
"We use it for ETL purposes as well as for implementing the full transformation pipelines."
"It is difficult for me to narrow down what the best features are in SAP HANA because they work together to provide the overall functionality of the solution. However, the Fiori application is very good."
"We have found the solution to be customizable and it is beneficial it comes as a bundled package. Additionally, it is user-friendly."
"Using this solution has given us better details for reporting and analytics."
"The user interface is very good. You can do any kind of reporting analytics from the platform."
"What I like best about SAP HANA is that it's faster than Microsoft SQL Server."
"The solution is very stable."
"What I like most are the dashboards and pervasive analytics."
"The in-memory computing and the efficient response time are very good features."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to see integration with data science platforms to optimize the processing capability for these tasks."
"Apache Spark is very difficult to use. It would require a data engineer. It is not available for every engineer today because they need to understand the different concepts of Spark, which is very, very difficult and it is not easy to learn."
"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."
"Dynamic DataFrame options are not yet 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."
"If you have a Spark session in the background, sometimes it's very hard to kill these sessions because of D allocation."
"The solution could improve by having better migration flexibility. For example, it would be helpful if there was a way for customers could check their nonproduction and production deployments."
"The worst thing about SAP HANA is the price; it's very expensive. The licensing cost, implementation cost, hosting cost, and appliance cost are all high."
"You cannot apply mulit-join inside the calculation views, for example, when you are joining tables."
"The bid process needs to be improved."
"SAP HANA is not strong like Oracle when it comes to finance. They are only strong with the logistic business project."
"SAP HANA is not perfect and they could improve by having more options and more integration."
"Ease of use could be improved in SAP HANA. I like SAP because SAP solutions can be used by anyone, which means even laymen can start working on SAP tools, but in SAP HANA modeling, you'll need to know some other technologies and sequel scripting, and you need a separate skillset, so if you don't have the skillset, you won't be able to work on SAP HANA. Making SAP HANA low-code would make it even better."
"I would like to see improvements in the connectivity of the solution with other BI software. Not every software can connect to it natively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They provide an open-source license for the on-premise version."
"I did not pay anything when using the tool on cloud services, but I had to pay on the compute side. The tool is not expensive compared with the benefits it offers. I rate the price as an eight out of ten."
"Apache Spark is an open-source tool."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"The tool is an open-source product. If you're using the open-source Apache Spark, no fees are involved at any time. Charges only come into play when using it with other services like Databricks."
"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."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"While the cost of the license may seem high, it is important to note that the benefits of the solution far outweighs the cost."
"The licensing cost for SAP HANA is approximately $200 per user per month."
"The price of licensing is dependent on the size of the project, however, we have found that there is scope to negotiate the cost. If the solution is implemented on-premises there may be some extra costs for hosting etc."
"We are spending about 20,000 to 30,000 euros on the solution."
"The price is high and could be a bit cheaper."
"A monthly or yearly license must be purchased, although its utility will be based on the cost-benefit analysis that is reached by the individual customer."
"The pricing is relatively high for both customers and partners."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Hadoop solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Compared to other solutions like Doc DB, Spark is more costly due to the need for extensive infrastructure. It requires significant investment in infrastructure, which can be expensive. While cloud...
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
The Spark solution could improve in scheduling tasks and managing dependencies. Spark alone cannot handle sequential tasks, requiring environments like Airflow scheduler or scripts. For instance, o...
What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.