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Cloudera Data Science Workbench vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Cloudera Data Science Workb...
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
22nd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Cloudera Data Science Workbench is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 19.1%, up from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Ismail Peer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for data science modeling but improvement is needed in MLOps and pricing
If you don't configure CDSW well, then it might be not useful for you. Deploying the tool can vary in complexity, but most of the time, it's relatively simple and straightforward. Triggering a job from data to production is easy, as the platform automates the deployment process. However, ensuring optimal resource allocation is essential for smooth operations.
Parag Bhosale - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrating engineering and learning, but cost challenges arise with cluster management
We often use a single cluster to ingest Databricks, which Databricks doesn't recommend. They suggest using a no-cluster solution like job clusters. This can be overwhelming for us because we started smaller. We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly. We need to stay in sync with the DVR versions, and migrations can pose challenges. For example, issues arose when we moved a cluster from a previous version to the latest one. We could use their job clusters, however, that increases costs, which is challenging for us as a startup. Maintaining this infrastructure can be a headache.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Cloudera Data Science Workbench is customizable and easy to use."
"I appreciate CDSW's ability to logically segregate environments, such as data, DR, and production, ensuring they don't interfere with each other. The deployment of machine learning is fast and easy to manage. Its API calls are also fast."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The solution's features are fantastic and include interactive clusters that perform at top speed when compared to other solutions."
"When we have a huge volume of data that we want to process with speed, velocity, and volume, we go through Databricks."
"It helps integrate data science and machine learning capabilities."
"Databricks makes it really easy to use a number of technologies to do data analysis. In terms of languages, we can use Scala, Python, and SQL. Databricks enables you to run very large queries, at a massive scale, within really good timeframes."
"The technical support is good."
"The tool helps with data processing and analytics with large-scale data or big data since it is associated with managing data at a large scale."
 

Cons

"Running this solution requires a minimum of 12GB to 16GB of RAM."
"The tool's MLOps is not good. It's pricing also needs to improve."
"The biggest problem associated with the product is that it is quite pricey."
"The product cannot be integrated with a popular coding IDE."
"When I used the support, I had communication problems because of the language barrier with the agent. The accent was difficult to understand."
"Doesn't provide a lot of credits or trial options."
"Instead of relying on a massive instance, the solution should offer micro partition levels. They're working on it, however, they need to implement it to help the solution run more effectively."
"There should be better integration with other platforms."
"Databricks requires writing code in Python or SQL, so if you're a good programmer then you can use Databricks."
"I have had some issues with some of the Spark clusters running on Databricks, where the Spark runtime and clusters go up and down, which is an area for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"We find Databricks to be very expensive, although this improved when we found out how to shut it down at night."
"The billing of Databricks can be difficult and should improve."
"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudera Data Science Workbench?
I appreciate CDSW's ability to logically segregate environments, such as data, DR, and production, ensuring they don't interfere with each other. The deployment of machine learning is fast and easy...
What needs improvement with Cloudera Data Science Workbench?
The tool's MLOps is not good. It's pricing also needs to improve.
What is your primary use case for Cloudera Data Science Workbench?
We have different use cases. Our banking use case uses machine learning to identify customer life events and recommend the best-suited card products. These machine-learning models are deployed in o...
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
 

Also Known As

CDSW
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IQVIA, Rush University Medical Center, Western Union
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudera Data Science Workbench vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.