AWS Glue vs Zapier comparison

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AWS Glue

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Zapier and AWS Glue are competitive in the automation and data integration category. AWS Glue has the upper hand for enterprises due to its robust enterprise-level features.

Features: Zapier offers extensive integration capabilities, allowing users to connect various applications easily. Its plug-and-play ability is beneficial for small to medium enterprises, and it provides valuable automation of workflows. AWS Glue is praised for scalability, integrating seamlessly with AWS products, and offering strong ETL processes. It also provides automatic schema detection and robust data management.

Room for Improvement: Zapier could improve Google Sheets integrations, support comprehensive logic, and offer better support channels. Users also request a wider range of integrations and more customization options. AWS Glue requires a more user-friendly interface, diverse programming language support, and better multi-cloud environment support. Users also find the setup process cumbersome and suggest operational cost reductions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zapier is primarily used on public clouds, with high ratings for ease of deployment and customer service. AWS Glue is flexible across public, private, and hybrid clouds but has a learning curve and inconsistent technical support, which affects satisfaction levels. While Zapier users experience quick resolutions due to its simplicity, AWS Glue excels in technical integrations but could improve accessibility and support consistency.

Pricing and ROI: Zapier's tiered pricing includes a free plan for basic needs, scaling based on usage. Despite being pricey when scaling, it offers good value for small businesses. AWS Glue's pay-as-you-go model can be costly for small businesses but provides robust enterprise capabilities that justify the expense. Both solutions offer strong ROI, with Zapier appealing to cost-sensitive small businesses and AWS Glue to large enterprises seeking powerful features.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Glue vs. Zapier Report (Updated: January 2025).

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AWS Glue vs. Zapier

January 2025

Helped 831,158 peers since 2012

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 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

Zapier

Ranking in Cloud Data Integration

10th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS Glue is 24.8%, up from 24.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zapier is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Integration

Featured Reviews

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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FrankHo

Analyst at MSXI

Though the tool offers a visually appealing UI, it needs to improve its documentation

With Zapier, improvements are required in the areas of concerns like bugs, ease of use, and documentation. The product has many bugs, so users have to wait for a period ranging from five minutes to an hour to see where the Zap went. In Zapier, Zaps aren't very understandable owing to the way they work. As a user, you would think that in Zapier, a Zap works in a particular way once you set it up, but it won't happen. At times, some Zaps can interfere with each other, because of which there might be infinite loops that may occur, owing to which multiple Zaps continue to run or break down in general, after which nothing would run in your environment. You would not be notified about the breakdown of Zaps. The bugs in the product may be considered to understand or get an explanation of how Zaps works between software systems, so for something between Gmail and HubSpot, Zapier would explain through better documentation what would work and what wouldn't work. Maybe if Zapier had better functionality with Python or any other coding language in general, it would make the product a lot better.

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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 aspect that I would like to highlight is the Glue Crawler, which we utilize when working with large datasets to ensure the schema updates seamlessly without requiring end-team knowledge."

"I also like that you can add custom libraries like JAR files and use them. So, the ability to use a fast processing engine and embed basic jobs easily are significant advantages."

"AWS Glue is very quick to start without cold starts, unlike AWS Lambda."

"The most valuable features currently are glue studio, jobs, and triggers."

"The product has a valuable feature for data catalog."

"We have found it beneficial when moving data from one source to another."

"Glue is a NoSQL-based data ETL tool that has some advantages over IIS and ISAs."

"AWS Glue is quite better than other tools, but you have to learn it properly before you start using it."

More AWS Glue pros

"What's most valuable in Zapier is its simplicity, seamlessness, and smooth plug-in, so you won't need to build code for every action. I'm not a developer, but I can use Zapier."

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is very intuitive and has a very flat learning curve."

"We can connect Zapier with Zoho CRM for lead generation. I like the tool's drag and drop feature."

"The product's most valuable feature is automation."

"Zapier is a really good tool for connecting multiple different platforms and data sources. For example, with Quickbase, I can easily integrate data from other sources like AWS or task-tracking platforms such as ClickUp or Asana."

"Zapier handles everything under the sun that you would think you need in automation. It is the most mature integration platform and service on the market."

"The ability to connect web applications to trigger actions in another app after having enriched, formatted, delayed, grouped, and filtered is really valuable for many businesses."

"The connection between Facebook lead forms and MailChimp integrations is the most valuable feature."

More Zapier pros

Cons

"There is a learning curve to this tool."

"The technical support for this solution could be improved. In future, we would like to connect more services like Athena or Kinesis to help control more loads of data."

"The process of entering environment variables in AWS Glue requires navigating to a different page, which could be streamlined."

"It is very difficult to learn the tool and remember the syntaxes comparatively."

"The solution's visual ETL tool is of no use for actual implementation."

"The drawbacks associated with the product stem from the fact that, based on the data volume, it can become very costly."

"On occasion, the solution's dashboard reports that a project failed due to runtime but it actually succeeded."

"The solution’s technical support could be improved."

More AWS Glue cons

"Some recent changes to the solution have made it bulky and not as intuitive to use as it previously was."

"I would like to see them improve the Quickbase integration. Currently, it only allows triggering actions when records are added, but it would be more useful if we could also trigger actions when records are modified or deleted."

"It is not worth the money if you have a little bit of a technical mind...Zapier is not able to set up different modules. When automation doesn't work, it's not that easy to find why it didn't work."

"The pricing could be a little cheaper."

"With Zapier, improvements are required in the areas of concerns like bugs, ease of use, and documentation."

"After mapping them out, and they'd worked for a while, I've had Zapier fail."

"It could support various languages along with Python."

"I think that this solution should have more apps connected to it."

More Zapier cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"AWS Glue is a high-priced solution that bills the client $150,000 to $250,000 annually."

"I rate the tool an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"Technical support is a paid service, and which subscription you have is dependent on that. You must pay one of them, and it ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per year."

"AWS Glue follows a pay-as-you-go model, wherein the cost of the data you use will be counted as a monthly bill."

"The solution's pricing is based on DPUs so it is a good idea to optimize use or it can get expensive."

More AWS Glue pricing and cost advice

"It's very affordable."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"Zapier's price is good."

"There is a free plan that is, of course, limited. However, it allows you to understand and check true scenarios for a while."

"Zapier is a paid service. Its license renews monthly, and Zapier will downgrade your subscription to the free version when your credit card doesn't have funds. That significantly impacts your service because everything halts completely. Zapier doesn't have any hidden costs."

"Think your Zaps through to make sure you don't use more Zaps than you need."

"The least expensive plan is $24 a month, and you can go all the way to $800 a month if you're a huge company using many tasks."

"The price of Zapier is approximately $75 monthly."

More Zapier pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

19%

University

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

What do you like most about Zapier?

The product's most valuable feature is automation.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zapier?

The pricing is suitable. It's not cheap, but not expensive.

What needs improvement with Zapier?

The pricing could be a little cheaper.

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Compared 5% of the time

Talend Open Studio vs AWS Glue

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 28% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Download AWS Glue product report

AWS Glue

January 2025

Download Zapier product report

December 2024

Learn More

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Overview

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.

Zapier is a tool for primarily non-technical users to connect together web apps.

An integration between two apps is called a Zap. A Zap is made up of a Trigger and one or more Actions or Searches.

Whenever the trigger happens in one app, Zapier will automatically perform the actions or searches in another app in order.

Zaps are very lightweight and easy to set up. Zaps do not import or export old data (they only operate on new items created after the Zap is enabled). Zaps are also not kept in sync ("two way syncing") after the Zap is triggered.

Zaps are deceivingly simple if you're used to dealing with complex and difficult integrations. Their simplicity is what enables anyone to create them.

Sample Customers

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

BuzzFeed, Groupon, Spotify, Columbia University, FOX