AWS Database Migration Service vs AWS Glue comparison

AWS Database Migration Service and AWS Glue are both solutions in the Cloud Data Integration category. AWS Database Migration Service is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1, while AWS Glue is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.6. AWS Database Migration Service holds a 17.1% mindshare in CDI, compared to AWS Glue’s 21.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of AWS Database Migration Service users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of AWS Glue users who would recommend it.

AWS Database Migration Service

Read 31 AWS Database Migration Service reviews

4,892 Views
4,104 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

AWS Glue

Read 48 AWS Glue reviews

7,339 Views
5,504 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

AWS Database Migration Service

AWS Glue

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

AWS Database Migration Service and AWS Glue compete in the data management space. AWS Database Migration Service excels in migrations due to its real-time data replication and automatic failover, while AWS Glue shines in data integration and transformation, presenting a versatile ETL environment.

Features: AWS Database Migration Service offers real-time data replication, continuous database migration, and automatic failover. It excels in minimizing application downtime during migration. AWS Glue provides a fully managed ETL service with data cataloging, diverse data source support, and automated schema discovery. These features simplify data transformation and preparation for analysis.

Room for Improvement: AWS Database Migration Service could enhance its support for more data sources and improve real-time analytics capabilities. It may also benefit from providing more extensive reporting features. AWS Glue can improve by offering advanced error handling and more detailed logging options. Enhancements in user interface responsiveness and better integration with external systems may also add value.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Database Migration Service is known for its straightforward deployment, often praised for quick setups and minimal configuration. The customer service is robust, catering to migration issues. AWS Glue's serverless architecture facilitates easy deployment, allowing users to focus on data tasks without managing infrastructure. It offers comprehensive support, suited for complex transformations.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Database Migration Service typically offers lower setup costs, with high ROI for database migrations due to minimal licensing fees. On the other hand, AWS Glue involves higher initial setup costs aligned with its extensive ETL capabilities, but provides significant returns through automation and efficiency in processing.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Database Migration Service vs. AWS Glue Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Database Migration Service vs. AWS Glue

March 2025

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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 Database Migration Service

Ranking in Cloud Data Integration

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

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

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 Database Migration Service is 17.1%, up from 15.7% 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

Avinash Gangu

Lead Architect at Fracral

Centralizing database tables enhances workflow efficiency for ease of use

I was looking for some content as part of a comparison analysis. However, one of the pain points is that it is way too free-flowing. I have to skim through all the security pages to get to the crux of it. I was looking for a table that suggests which facets such services address with proofs of reference from professional conferences. The document is a 63-page read, making it very difficult to navigate without a summary. I was looking for a summary at the start, however, if I have to do it myself, I might as well integrate from AWS Docs and then Informative Exchange. The current document contains a lot of information, which is great, but there needs to be a summary indicating the story's essence. Unless there's a correction, it is not present in the document.

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Muthuvel Sivaraman

AVP at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the features, I find most valuable is its ability to apply rules and transformations to data during real-time integration. This includes changing schema names or table structures on AWS without delaying the data flow. Initially, full migrations can vary widely in time depending on the source system; for instance, a large Magento database might take up to six months, while smaller databases like IBM DB2 could migrate within hours. Once set up, AWS DMS ensures real-time synchronization using Change Data Capture (CDC), maintaining data integrity throughout the process."

"I like that I can focus on the logic and I don't have to worry about the administration stuff. AWS handles that for me."

"AWS Database Migration Service is good for smaller workloads and provides compatibility."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"We have the ability to bring data for all tables of a database in one go, as long as the tables follow a particular naming convention."

"Support is helpful."

"If your infrastructure is already on Amazon, it simply makes the most sense to use a tool officially provided by them as an additional service, rather than having to rely on a third-party solution."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

More AWS Database Migration Service pros

"You do not need many frameworks to run Glue."

"It is a stable and scalable solution."

"I like its integration and ability to handle all data-related tasks."

"I like that it's flexible, powerful, and allows you to write your own queries and scripts to get the needed transformations."

"Our entire use case was very easily handled or solved using this solution."

"Its user interface is quite good. You just need to choose some options to create a job in AWS Glue. The code-generation feature is also useful. If you don't want to customize it and simply want to read a file and store the data in the database, it can generate the code for you."

"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."

"I appreciate AWS Glue for its cost-effectiveness."

More AWS Glue pros

Cons

"There are a set of complexities and challenges when a user wants to integrate AWS products with Microsoft products."

"Migrating from here and pushing the data from on-premise to AWS cloud is a big challenge and a few more services from AWS would be helpful. For example, we are currently using ILDB internet tools which move data from on-premise to the AWS cloud. A few more services would be really helpful for me to move the master data."

"Sometimes we encounter errors, and the error messages from DMS are very ambiguous and sometimes misleading."

"The cost is a concern. We use DMS because of its simplicity, but the price could definitely be more competitive."

"The names of the services need improvement since AWS doesn't indicate what the function of the product is presently. You need to read a lot to find the service that you want in the product."

"We would like to see some improvement in the performance of large scale procedures, such as when we migrate from Oracle to csSQL."

"I was looking for a table that suggests which facets such services address with proofs of reference from professional conferences."

"It would be helpful if the bandwidth could be independent of the network or if we could have a dedicated bandwidth for this product."

More AWS Database Migration Service cons

"Only people who can code, either in Java or Python, can use the product freely. Those who don't know Java or Python might find using AWS Glue difficult."

"It is not clear how the partition discovery would have been affected by more data coming in."

"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The interesting thing we found is that it was a little strange at the beginning. The way Glue works is not very straightforward. After trying different things, for example, we used just the console to create jobs. Then we realized that things were not working as expected. After researching and learning more, we realized that even though the console creates the script for the ETL processes, you need to modify or write your own script in Spark to do everything you want it to do. For example, we are pulling data from our source database and our application database, which is in Aurora. From there, we are doing the ETL to transform the data and write the results into Redshift. But what was surprising is that it's almost like whatever you want to do, you can do it with Glue because you have the option to put together your own script. Even though there are many functionalities and many connections, you have the opportunity to write your own queries to do whatever transformations you need to do. It's a little deceiving that some options are supposed to work in a certain way when you set them up in the console, but then they are not exactly working the right way or not as expected. It would be better if they provided more examples and more documentation on options."

"It fails to handle massive databases acquired from various sources."

"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."

"We face performance issues when using AWS Glue for data transformation and integration."

"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."

More AWS Glue cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of pricing, I'd rate it an eight out of ten, considering it's a well-priced solution."

"The pricing can be better and it should be more competitive."

"AWS Database Migration Service is very inexpensive."

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"Pricing for the solution is reasonable, but could still be reduced."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

"Pricing can be improved."

"AWS Database Migration Service is the least expensive solution, but is still expensive."

More AWS Database Migration Service pricing and cost advice

"If you are using the solution for an enterprise business, it will be expensive."

"AWS Glue is a paid service that doesn't come under the free trial of AWS."

"AWS Glue uses a pay-as-you-go approach which is helpful. The price of the overall solution is low and is a great advantage."

"This solution is affordable and there is an option to pay for the solution based on your usage."

"The overall cost of AWS Glue could be better. It cost approximately $1,000 a month. There is paid support available from AWS Glue."

"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."

"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."

More AWS Glue pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What resources can you use to learn how to utilize AWS Database Migration Service?

As with all AWS products, you are given very useful documentation with AWS Database Migration Service. Before we started using this product, we went over it and we were able to learn the basics an...

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Would you recommend AWS Database Migration Service as a cloud data integration tool?

My current company started using AWS Database Migration Service upon my recommendation, and I continue telling people how good of a product it is. However, users should keep in mind a few things. ...

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Is AWS Database Migration Service an affordable solution?

Compared to similar solutions, AWS Database Migration Service falls somewhere in the middle price-wise, at least from my experience. This being said, it is not a very affordable solution, especial...

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How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?

AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Database Migration Service

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Glue

March 2025

Download AWS Glue product report

Also Known As

AWS Data Migration Service

No data available

Overview

AWS Database Migration Service, also known as AWS DMS, is a cloud service that facilitates the migration of relational databases, NoSQL databases, data warehouses, and other types of data stores. The product can be used to migrate users' data into the AWS Cloud or between combinations of on-premises and cloud setups. The solution allows migration between a wide variety of sources and target endpoints; the only requirement is that one of the endpoints has to be an AWS service. AWS DMS cannot be used to migrate from an on-premises database to another on-premises database.

AWS Database Migration Service allows users to perform one-time migrations, as well as replications of ongoing changes to keep sources and targets in sync. Organizations can utilize the AWS Schema Conversion Tool to translate their database schema to a new platform and then use AWS DMS to migrate the data. The product offers cost efficiency as a part of the AWS Cloud, as well as speed to market, flexibility, and security.

The main use cases of AWS Database Migration Service include:

Migrating from legacy or on-premises databases to managed cloud services through a simplified migration process.
Reliable replication of backup files to minimize downtime and data loss.
Improvement of integration through building of data lakes and performing real-time processing on change data from users' data stores.

AWS Database Migration Service Components

AWS Database Migration Service consists of various components which function together to achieve users’ data migration. A migration on AWS DMS is structured in three levels: a replication instance, source and target endpoints, and a replication task. The components include the following actions:

Replication instance: AWS Database Migration Service provides users with a variety of replication instances, allowing them to select the optimal configuration for their use case. Depending on the instance class an organization selects, their replication instance provides a different amount of data storage.
Endpoint: AWS DMS uses an endpoint to access users' source or target data stores. The connection information is different and depends on the specific data store, but it usually consists of the following information: endpoint type, engine type, server name, port, encryption, and credentials. This information can easily be managed through the AWS DMS console.
Replication tasks: AWS Database Migration Service replication tasks can be used to move a set of data from the source endpoint to the target endpoint. The creation of a replication task is the last required step before starting a migration. Each replication task requires the following settings to be set: replication instance, source endpoint, target endpoint, and migration type options.
Ongoing replication or change data capture (CDC): AWS DMS also has the capacity to capture ongoing changes to the source that is stored while users migrate their data to a target.
Schema and code migration: The product requires assistance from tools such as MySQL Workbench, pgAdmin III, and Oracle SQL Developer to perform schema or code conversion, as it cannot do it on its own.

AWS Database Migration Service Benefits

AWS Database Migration Service offers its users a wide range of benefits. Among them are the following:

The solution ensures minimal downtime, as it continuously replicates the changes to the user’s source database during migration.
AWS DMS provides users with flexibility, as it supports many commonly used databases, including commercial and open-source ones.
The product is user friendly, as it offers an easy set of tasks in the AWS Management Console.
Users of Aurora, Redshift, DocumentDB, and DynamoDB can benefit from the free use of AWS DMS.
AWS Database Migration Service is very reliable because it is a self-healing service that automatically restarts in cases of interruptions.
The product supports both homogenous migrations and heterogenous migrations.
AWS DMS accelerates business growth, as it scales businesses at an affordable price.

Reviews from Real Users

Vishal S., an infrastructure lead at a computer software company, likes AWS Database Migration Service because it is easy to use and set up.

Vinod K., a data analyst at AIMLEAP, describes AWS DMS as an easy solution to save and extract data.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS Glue is a serverless cloud data integration tool that facilitates the discovery, preparation, movement, and integration of data from multiple sources for machine learning (ML), analytics, and application development. The solution includes additional productivity and data ops tooling for running jobs, implementing business workflows, and authoring.

AWS Glue allows users to connect to more than 70 diverse data sources and manage data in a centralized data catalog. The solution facilitates visual creation, running, and monitoring of extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines to load data into users' data lakes. This Amazon product seamlessly integrates with other native applications of the brand and allows users to search and query cataloged data using Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, and Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

The solution also utilizes application programming interface (API) operations to transform users' data, create runtime logs, store job logic, and create notifications for monitoring job runs. The console of AWS Glue connects all of these services into a managed application, facilitating the monitoring and operational processes. The solution also performs provisioning and management of the resources required to run users' workloads in order to minimize manual work time for organizations.

AWS Glue Features

AWS Glue groups its features into four categories - discover, prepare, integrate, and transform. Within those groups are the following features:

Automatic schema discovery: AWS Glue crawlers connect to the organization's source or target data source through a prioritized list of classifiers to determine the schema for users' data. This feature creates metadata in companies' AWS Glue Data Catalog.
Schemas for data stream management: The AWS Glue Schema Registry enables users to validate and control the evolution of streaming data through registered Apache Avro schemas for no additional charge.
Automatic scaling based on workload: This feature dynamically scales resources up and down based on workload. The feature controls job resources, removing them depending on how much the workload can be split up.
FindMatches: This feature is for machine learning-based data deduplication and cleansing, and works by finding records that are imperfect matches of each other to remove useless data copies.
Edit, debug, and test ETL code: This feature helps users who have chosen to interactively develop their ETL code by providing development endpoints for editing, debugging, and testing the code it generates for them.
AWS Glue DataBrew: An interactive, point-and-click visual interface for specialists to clean and normalize data without the need to write any code.
AWS Glue Interactive Sessions: This feature simplifies the development of data integration jobs by enabling data engineers to interactively prepare and explore data.
AWS Glue Studio Job Notebooks: This AWS Glue feature provides serverless notebooks with minimal setup, allowing developers to start working in a timely manner.
Complex ETL pipeline building: This feature allows the product to be invoked on a schedule, on demand, or based on an event, allowing users to start multiple jobs in parallel or specify dependencies to build complex ETL pipelines.
AWS Glue Studio: This AWS Glue feature allows users to visually transform data through a drag-and-drop interface. The product automatically generates the code for ETL processes for users' data.

AWS Glue Benefits

AWS Glue offers a wide range of benefits for its users. These benefits include:

Users of other AWS products can easily onboard with AWS Glue, as it is integrated across a wide range of the company's services.
The solution is serverless, which allows for a lower total cost of ownership.
AWS Glue offers more power for users, as it automates much of the effort in building, maintaining, and running ETL jobs.
The product allows customers to easily discover and search across all their AWS datasets through AWS Glue Data Catalog.
AWS Glue does not require additional payment for managing and enforcing schemas for data streams.
The solution facilitates the authority of scalable ETL jobs for beginners and non-coding experts through a drag-and-drop interface.

Reviews from Real Users

Mustapha A., a cloud data engineer at Jems Groupe, likes AWS Glue because it is a product that is great for serverless data transformations.

Liana I., CEO at Quark Technologies SRL, describes AWS Glue as a highly scalable, reliable, and beneficial pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Veoci, Trimble, Nasdaq, shaadi.com, Hotelbeds, SysAid, Verizon, Expedia, Pega

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

Buyer's Guide

AWS Database Migration Service vs. AWS Glue

March 2025

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