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

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

"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"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 Glue is quite better than other tools, but you have to learn it properly before you start using it."
"AWS Glue's best features are scalability and cloud-based features."
"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."
"Data catalog and triggers are the two best features for me. AWS Glue has its own data catalog, which makes it great and really easy to use. Triggers are also really good for scheduling the ETL process."
"The most valuable feature for me is the visual interface of AWS Glue."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Glue is its ease of use and good documentation. Additionally, we can do all the transformations that we need."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Glue is that it provides a GUI format with a drag-and-drop feature."
"We no longer had to worry much about infrastructure management because AWS Glue is serverless, and Amazon takes care of the underlying infrastructure."
 

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."
"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."
"The start-up time is really high right now. For instance, when you start up a new job, you have to wait for five or eight minutes before it starts. If the start-up time is reduced to one or two minutes, it will be great. It will be better to have a direct linkage to Redshift in AWS. If we can use data catalogs from Redshift, it will be so easy to create some data catalogs. Currently, we can only use data catalogs from S3."
"One area that could be improved is the ETL view. The drag-and-drop interface is not as user-friendly as some other ETL tools."
"It fails to handle massive databases acquired from various sources."
"In terms of performance, if they can further optimize the execution time for serverless jobs, it would be a welcome improvement."
"The solution should offer features for streaming data in addition to batching data."
"The drawbacks associated with the product stem from the fact that, based on the data volume, it can become very costly."
"If there's a cluster-related configuration, we have to make worker notes, which is quite a headache when processing a large amount of data."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, and it is a pay-as-you-go model."
"The solution's pricing is based on DPUs so it is a good idea to optimize use or it can get expensive."
"I would rate the solution a six or seven on a scale of one to ten, with ten being very expensive. Specifically, I rate its pricing a six out of ten."
"AWS Glue is a paid service that doesn't come under the free trial of AWS."
"I rate pricing an eight out of ten."
"It is not expensive. AWS Glue works on the serverless architecture. We get charged for the time the server is up. For our use case, we have to use it once in a day, and it is not expensive for us."
"The current cost is around forty to fifty thousand a month."
"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."
"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
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: February 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.