Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Databricks vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Organizations experience mixed returns from Databricks, with benefits from cost savings and efficiency, but challenges in initial migration.
Sentiment score
7.0
Users experienced positive ROI with Azure Synapse, citing cost reductions, improved data efficiency, and flexibility over traditional solutions.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks customer service is generally effective with prompt responses, though some report issues mainly with third-party support channels.
Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics support quality varies; larger accounts receive better service, but smaller customers experience challenges.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
They are slow to respond and not very knowledgeable.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for efficient scalability and cloud compatibility, allowing easy resource adjustment across diverse projects and industries.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers high scalability, enabling easy scaling for diverse industries despite potential high costs.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is scalable, offering numerous opportunities for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is stable and efficient for large data, with minor issues during updates and occasional connectivity challenges.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is stable, commendable in performance, but some users desire improvements for large data handling reliability.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Cluster failure is one of the biggest weaknesses I notice in our Databricks.
I find the service stable as I have not encountered many issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks users desire improved UI, enhanced data visualization, better integration, clearer error messages, robust support, and comprehensive documentation.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics needs improvements in pricing, usability, integration, performance, and advanced features for enhanced overall functionality.
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 use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
If I could right-click to copy absolute paths or to read files directly into a data frame, it would standardize and simplify the process.
There is a need for more expertise among the support team to guide us effectively.
 

Setup Cost

Databricks pricing depends on usage, with flexibility in licensing, and can vary in competitiveness compared to other solutions.
Enterprise users of Azure Synapse Analytics find pricing variable, ranging from affordable to expensive, with concerns over billing unpredictability.
 

Valuable Features

Databricks provides a unified platform for data engineering, machine learning, seamless cloud integration, and robust data management capabilities.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers scalability, seamless integration, user-friendly design, robust security, and efficient data processing for businesses.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
Developers can share their notebooks. Git and Azure DevOps integration on the Databricks side is also very helpful.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers significant visibility, which helps us understand our usage more clearly.
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Databricks is 8.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.5%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

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.
Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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...
How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
We use an enterprise-level subscription for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. I would rate our satisfaction with the price around five, as I have not focused much on cost aspects presently.
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.