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Databricks vs H2O.ai 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

Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
H2O.ai
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Model Monitoring (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 18.2%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of H2O.ai is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Kashif Yaseen - PeerSpot reviewer
Plug-and-play convenience enhances productivity but needs better multimodal support
We mostly used the solution in the domain that I'm working. We had most of the use cases around chatbots and conversational BI The solution was plug-and-play, meaning most of the components were handled by the solution itself rather than building them from scratch. This was useful for our banking…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The processing capacity is tremendous in the database."
"The solution offers a free community version."
"Databricks is a unified solution that we can use for streaming. It is supporting open source languages, which are cloud-agnostic. When I do database coding if any other tool has a similar language pack to Excel or SQL, I can use the same knowledge, limiting the need to learn new things. It supports a lot of Python libraries where I can use some very easily."
"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."
"Databricks serves as a single platform that can handle numerous end-to-end machine learning tasks."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Databricks covers end-to-end data analytics workflow in one platform, this is the best feature of the solution."
"We like that this solution can handle a wide variety and velocity of data engineering, either in batch mode or real-time."
"The most valuable feature of H2O.ai is that it is plug-and-play."
"Fast training, memory-efficient DataFrame manipulation, well-documented, easy-to-use algorithms, ability to integrate with enterprise Java apps (through POJO/MOJO) are the main reasons why we switched from Spark to H2O."
"It is helpful, intuitive, and easy to use. The learning curve is not too steep."
"The ease of use in connecting to our cluster machines."
"One of the most interesting features of the product is their driverless component. The driverless component allows you to test several different algorithms along with navigating you through choosing the best algorithm."
"The most valuable features are the machine learning tools, the support for Jupyter Notebooks, and the collaboration that allows you to share it across people."
"AutoML helps in hands-free initial evaluations of efficiency/accuracy of ML algorithms."
 

Cons

"It would be great if Databricks could integrate all the cloud platforms."
"The integration and query capabilities can be improved."
"I would like it if Databricks made it easier to set up a project."
"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."
"There should be better integration with other platforms."
"Databricks could improve in some of its functionality."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio. When I create a data frame or a table, R Studio provides a preview of the data. In R Studio, I can see that it created a table with so many columns or rows. Then I can click on it and open a preview of that data."
"Scalability is an area with certain shortcomings. The solution's scalability needs improvement."
"The interpretability module has room for improvement. Also, it needs to improve its ability to integrate with other systems, like SageMaker, and the overall integration capability."
"It needs a drag and drop GUI like KNIME, for easy access to and visibility of workflows."
"Referring to bullet-3 as well, H2O DataFrame manipulation capabilities are too primitive."
"On the topic of model training and model governance, this solution cannot handle ten or twelve models running at the same time."
"I would like to see more features related to deployment."
"It lacks the data manipulation capabilities of R and Pandas DataFrames. We would kill for dplyr offloading H2O."
"H2O.ai can improve in areas like multimodal support and prompt engineering."
"The model management features could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing is moderate."
"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"The solution is affordable."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."
"Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five."
"We have seen significant ROI where we were able to use the product in certain key projects and could automate a lot of processes. We were even able to reduce staff."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What needs improvement with H2O.ai?
H2O.ai can improve in areas like multimodal support and prompt engineering. They are already working on updates and changes. Although I haven't explored all the new products they've added to their ...
What is your primary use case for H2O.ai?
We mostly used the solution in the domain that I'm working. We had most of the use cases around chatbots and conversational BI.
What advice do you have for others considering H2O.ai?
It is important to address data privacy concerns and ensure you're choosing the right vendor that meets your use case demands. Also, you may leave my name, Kashif, but please keep the company name ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
poder.io, Stanley Black & Decker, G5, PWC, Comcast, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. H2O.ai and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.