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AWS AppSync vs AWS Glue 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

AWS AppSync
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Glue
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS AppSync is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Glue is 21.3%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Akil Saji - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of creating APIs with ongoing updates needed for automation
AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs. The ease of use is a main advantage, allowing even beginners to start from scratch and learn through AppSync. Before AWS, developing and managing APIs was quite complex. AWS provided AppSync, which assists developers and startup founders. Startups blooming everywhere benefit from this service, welcoming those who lack prior knowledge. When working on AWS, I notice that Amazon regularly implements new features. For instance, with the Lambda service, AWS is transitioning from an old editor to a new one. Similarly, AppSync frequently introduces updates and changes. This trend is making the user interface more accessible, even for individuals without a technical background. Additionally, the cost is attractive, as AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. These factors make AppSync both easy to use and cost-effective.
Muthuvel Sivaraman - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles a huge volume of data and is serverless, but it can be considered costly by some users
We use Amazon's services to provide technical support for the product. If you want to have support, Oracle and others offer a single support, and other tools have a direct support window. For Amazon, we need to pay 10 percent of my billing amount for the tool to get support services. Whether to raise a support ticket or not is an issue since ten percent is a huge amount. My company ends up using all the options without help from support. It is very difficult for any common man to understand why there is a need to pay ten percent for support. If I find an issue in the product, and I need to get support from AWS to fix it, then I need to pay ten percent of the tool's bill amount to Amazon. AWS is a very tricky tool because everything is evolving nowadays. AWS engineers are getting hired from other places, and even after that, if I am not getting any technical support, then things will be very nasty. There are some good engineers who help users outside the normal support cycle, but it doesn't meet their needs. I rate the technical support a four out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Support for multiple data sources and formats is a fantastic feature."
"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"What I like best about AWS Glue is its real-time data backup feature. Last week, there was a production push, and what used to take almost ten days to send out around fifty-six thousand emails now takes only two hours."
"Transformations are valuable because you can modify or override complex data logic from an open source or Spark to solve issues."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"We no longer had to worry much about infrastructure management because AWS Glue is serverless, and Amazon takes care of the underlying infrastructure."
"For ETL, I feel the performance is excellent."
"AWS Glue is fast and managed by AWS. Hence, you don't have to worry about capacity and the performance of Glue jobs. It has integrations with other data stores of AWS. The product offers metadata management, logging, and ETL processing capabilities. It comes with a powerful feature, Glue Studio, which helps to do queries interactively within the community. It is a managed service and very secure. Another popular and mature service is S3."
"The solution is serverless so it allows us to transform data while optimizing the cost and performance of Spark jobs."
"The key role for Glue is that it hosts our metadata before rolling out our actual data. This is the major advantage of using this solution and our clients client have been very satisfied with it."
 

Cons

"In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial."
"Moving to other clouds is impossible without significantly rearchitecting your applications."
"In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial."
"Cost-wise, AWS Glue is expensive, so that's an area for improvement. The process for setting up the solution was also complex, which is another area for improvement."
"There is a learning curve to this tool."
"Beginners need additional support as it currently lacks some features required for complex transformations, often necessitating custom Python coding."
"We face performance issues when using AWS Glue for data transformation and integration."
"The solution's visual ETL tool is of no use for actual implementation."
"I am quite technical, yet when it comes to data pipelines, I prefer using GUIs over code-based calls. It might be easier with a different skill set."
"The interface for AWS Glue could improve, they do not put a lot of details. You can write the code, in PySpark or in Scala, which is a big advantage, it is only easy to use for a developer. It will be difficult for new users to enter the cloud environment."
"The solution could be cheaper. The price of the solution is an area that needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, and it is a pay-as-you-go model."
"AWS Glue is a high-priced solution that bills the client $150,000 to $250,000 annually."
"This solution is affordable and there is an option to pay for the solution based on your usage."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"I rate the product's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"Its price is good. We pay as we go or based on the usage, which is a good thing for us because it is simple to forecast for the tool. It is good in terms of the financial planning of the company, and it is a good way to estimate the cost. It is also simple for our clients. In my opinion, it is one of the best tools in the market for ETL processes because of the fact that you pay as you use, which separates it from other big tools such as PowerCenter, Pentaho Data Integration, and Talend."
"The overall cost of AWS Glue could be better. It cost approximately $1,000 a month. There is paid support available from AWS Glue."
"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."
"The pricing is a bit higher than other solutions like Athena and EC2. If the pricing becomes more scaled or flexible, it will be good because you have to pay 44 cents just for one DPU for an hour. If you increase DPUs to 5 or 10, the pricing gets multiplied. There are also some time limits like 0 to 10 minutes or 10 to 20 minutes. If the pricing is according to the minutes, it would be better because you have to limit your job to 10 minutes or 20 minutes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
17%
Healthcare Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS AppSync?
We initially had limited knowledge about AWS costs. As beginners, we ran many instances for over a month. Consequently, we received a bill from Amazon for around $20, which was unexpected. This hig...
What needs improvement with AWS AppSync?
In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial. Regular updates might soon address th...
What is your primary use case for AWS AppSync?
Our company handles in-house projects and serves clients globally. My role with AppSync involves creating GraphQL APIs. There are different types of APIs, such as REST API, GraphQL API, and WebSock...
How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?
AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...
 

Also Known As

AppSync
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACBL, Puresec, IDT, ASU, Public Good, cookpad, ALDO, ticketmaster
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS AppSync vs. AWS Glue and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.