AWS Lake Formation vs Azure Data Factory comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.3, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.2% mindshare in CDW, compared to Microsoft’s 8.4% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

AWS Lake Formation

Read 8 AWS Lake Formation reviews

2,300 Views
1,944 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Azure Data Factory

Read 90 Azure Data Factory reviews

4,155 Views
3,276 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Azure Data Factory

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Azure Data Factory and AWS Lake Formation are competing cloud services in managing and orchestrating data workflows. Azure Data Factory seems to have an advantage with superior pricing and customer support but AWS Lake Formation's robust features justify its cost for those prioritizing comprehensive capabilities.

Features: Azure Data Factory offers entrenched integration options across various platforms, intuitive data mapping, and transformation capabilities with ease of use. AWS Lake Formation provides a focused system for setting up secure data lakes with automated data cataloging and fine-grained access control, establishing a strong data governance framework.

Room for Improvement: Azure Data Factory could improve its security features and offer more detailed monitoring capabilities. Expanding built-in connectors for even wider integration and enhancing real-time streaming support could also be beneficial. AWS Lake Formation might focus on streamlining its initial setup and improving user interface simplicity. Offering enhanced support for data analysis tools and additional automation features could further elevate its service.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Data Factory enables quick deployment with agility and receives praise for rapid customer service responses. AWS Lake Formation requires more setup time due to its emphasis on security and data governance, suitable for businesses needing extensive formulations but offers a thorough data management process.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Data Factory presents attractive pricing with low initial setup costs, promoting a favorable ROI for enterprises needing cost-effective solutions. AWS Lake Formation involves higher initial costs, which are balanced by its valuable data governance capabilities, rendering it appealing for businesses focusing on security and oversight.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory

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 Lake Formation

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Azure Data Factory

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.2%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Data Factory is 8.4%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ramesh Raghavan

US South Lead, Accenture AWS Business Group at Accenture

Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better

There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.

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Joy Maitra

Sr. Technical Architect at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Facilitates seamless data pipeline creation with good analytics and and thorough monitoring

Azure Data Factory is a low code, no code platform, which is helpful. It provides many prebuilt functionalities that assist in building data pipelines. Also, it facilitates easy transformation with all required functionalities for analytics. Furthermore, it connects to different sources out-of-the-box, making integration much easier. The monitoring is very thorough, though a more readable version would be appreciable.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."

"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."

"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."

"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

"We haven't had any issues connecting it to other products."

"The workflow automation features in GitLab, particularly its low code/no code approach, are highly beneficial for accelerating development speed. This feature allows for quick creation of pipelines and offers customization options for integration needs, making it versatile for various use cases. GitLab supports a wide range of connectors, catering to a majority of integration needs. Azure Data Factory's virtual enterprise and monitoring capabilities, the visual interface of GitLab makes it user-friendly and easy to teach, facilitating adoption within teams. While the monitoring capabilities are sufficient out of the box, they may not be as comprehensive as dedicated enterprise monitoring tools. GitLab's monitoring features are manageable for production use, with the option to integrate log analytics or create custom dashboards if needed. The data flow feature in Azure Data Factory within GitLab is valuable for data transformation tasks, especially for those who may not have expertise in writing complex code. It simplifies the process of data manipulation and is particularly useful for individuals unfamiliar with Spark coding. While there could be improvements for more flexibility, overall, the data flow feature effectively accomplishes its purpose within GitLab's ecosystem."

"This solution has provided us with an easier, and more efficient way to carry out data migration tasks."

"I am one hundred percent happy with the stability."

"The most valuable features of Azure Data Factory are the flexibility, ability to move data at scale, and the integrations with different Azure components."

"We use the solution to move data from on-premises to the cloud."

"I enjoy the ease of use for the backend JSON generator, the deployment solution, and the template management."

"Feature-wise, one of the most valuable ones is the data flows introduced recently in the solution."

More Azure Data Factory pros

Cons

"You need to have data experience to use the product."

"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."

"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."

"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."

"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"The product could provide more ways to import and export data."

"There's no Oracle connector if you want to do transformation using data flow activity, so Azure Data Factory needs more connectors for data flow transformation."

"There should be a way that it can do switches, so if at any point in time I want to do some hybrid mode of making any data collections or ingestions, I can just click on a button."

"The tool’s workflow is not user-friendly. It should also improve its orchestration monitoring."

"If the user interface was more user friendly and there was better error feedback, it would be helpful."

"We require Azure Data Factory to be able to connect to Google Analytics."

"When we initiated the cluster, it took some time to start the process."

"There is no built-in function for automatically adding notifications concerning the progress or outline of a pipeline run."

More Azure Data Factory cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"My company is on a monthly subscription for Azure Data Factory, but it's more of a pay-as-you-go model where your monthly invoice depends on how many resources you use. On a scale of one to five, pricing for Azure Data Factory is a four. It's just the usage fees my company pays monthly."

"The licensing model for Azure Data Factory is good because you won't have to overpay. Pricing-wise, the solution is a five out of ten. It was not expensive, and it was not cheap."

"The pricing model is based on usage and is not cheap."

"The price you pay is determined by how much you use it."

"The cost is based on the amount of data sets that we are ingesting."

"The pricing is a bit on the higher end."

"The solution's pricing is competitive."

"I don't see a cost; it appears to be included in general support."

More Azure Data Factory pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?

It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?

The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...

See all answers

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 Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?

Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...

See all answers

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?

Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 37% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 12% of the time

BigQuery vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon EMR vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Informatica PowerCenter vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 11% of the time

Snowflake vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 9% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 7% of the time

Alteryx Designer vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Azure Data Factory

Compared 5% of the time

More Azure Data Factory Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

April 2025

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure Data Factory

April 2025

Download Azure Data Factory product report

Overview

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure Data Factory efficiently manages and integrates data from various sources, enabling seamless movement and transformation across platforms. Its valuable features include seamless integration with Azure services, handling large data volumes, flexible transformation, user-friendly interface, extensive connectors, and scalability. Users have experienced improved team performance, workflow simplification, enhanced collaboration, streamlined processes, and boosted productivity.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

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

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. LinkedIn 7. Mastercard 8. Nestle 9. Pfizer 10. Samsung 11. Siemens 12. Toyota 13. Unilever 14. Verizon 15. Walmart 16. Accenture 17. American Express 18. AT&T 19. Bank of America 20. Cisco 21. Deloitte 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. JPMorgan Chase 27. Microsoft (Azure Data Factory is developed by Microsoft) 28. Oracle 29. Procter & Gamble 30. Salesforce 31. Shell 32. Visa

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory

March 2025

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. Azure Data Factory

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