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Pros & Cons summary

Buyer's Guide

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

AWS Glue's integration with other AWS services and features such as Jupyter Notebook and S3 make it highly valuable for users.
The scalability and serverless nature of AWS Glue allow for cost-effective and efficient data processing.
The data catalog and triggers are highlighted as some of the best features, offering efficient scheduling and metadata management.
AWS Glue's ETL capabilities, including automatic schema detection and incremental data updates, simplify data transformation.
The code-generation feature and compatibility with common languages like Python enhance AWS Glue's flexibility and ease of use in data tasks.

CONS

The start-up time for jobs is currently high, requiring five to eight minutes, and would benefit from being reduced to one or two minutes.
The current support is limited to Python and Scala; adding Java would enhance customization options.
AWS Glue is considered expensive, and its pricing could be improved.
It lacks multi-cloud capability, limiting its flexibility compared to more agnostic tools.
Training materials and resources for AWS Glue usage are insufficient, making it challenging for new users to learn efficiently.
 

AWS Glue Pros review quotes

NS
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 2, 2025
For ETL, I feel the performance is excellent.
SC
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
Aug 5, 2025
AWS Glue has reduced efforts by 60%, which is the main benefit.
reviewer2322996 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Jan 9, 2025
If I'm working with big data, common languages like Python work quite nicely, which is advantageous.
Learn what your peers think about AWS Glue. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
Apr 28, 2025
AWS Glue's most valuable features include its transformation capabilities, which provide data quality and shape for processing in ML or AI models.
Suraj-Sachdeva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Developer for cloud services at Coforge Growth Agency
Nov 22, 2024
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.
TM
Offshore Delivery | AWS architect | Manager - Projects at Cognizant
Nov 11, 2024
AWS Glue is very quick to start without cold starts, unlike AWS Lambda.
Nitish Kumar Mahatha - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer (AWS) at KFin Technologies Ltd
Oct 29, 2024
The AWS Glue Data Catalog provides metadata management and schema discovery. AWS Glue simplifies data transformation with automatic schema detection, incremental data updates, and integration with other AWS services.
Muthuvel Sivaraman - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Jun 21, 2024
It is a very scalable solution.
Andre Luis Tiago Soares - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer Data Engineer at COLLAB
Nov 19, 2024
The best thing about AWS Glue is its scalability and how easy it is to process a large amount of data.
ParamShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Manager at Milestone Technologies
Jan 16, 2024
Our entire use case was very easily handled or solved using this solution.
 

AWS Glue Cons review quotes

NS
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 2, 2025
Improvements in the UI are needed, as it is challenging to understand some functionalities.
SC
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
Aug 5, 2025
When comparing to tools such as Airflow, Glue workflows are still relatively basic in terms of flexibility and complex branching.
reviewer2322996 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Jan 9, 2025
It is quite clunky and code-heavy, which is my biggest problem.
Learn what your peers think about AWS Glue. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
Apr 28, 2025
In the building and deployment aspects, there is room for improvement. The current process is a bit complicated and could benefit from being more user-friendly and simpler, which would help speed up the deployment process.
Suraj-Sachdeva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Developer for cloud services at Coforge Growth Agency
Nov 22, 2024
The point for improvement in AWS Glue would be the dynamic allocation of resources while utilizing Lambda functions.
TM
Offshore Delivery | AWS architect | Manager - Projects at Cognizant
Nov 11, 2024
The process of entering environment variables in AWS Glue requires navigating to a different page, which could be streamlined.
Nitish Kumar Mahatha - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer (AWS) at KFin Technologies Ltd
Oct 29, 2024
AWS Glue should be more reliable and faster in processing. Enhancing the speed of data processing would be beneficial.
Muthuvel Sivaraman - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Jun 21, 2024
The drawbacks associated with the product stem from the fact that, based on the data volume, it can become very costly.
Andre Luis Tiago Soares - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer Data Engineer at COLLAB
Nov 19, 2024
Setting up pipelines is challenging, especially with version control and testing requirements.
ParamShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Manager at Milestone Technologies
Jan 16, 2024
It is not clear how the partition discovery would have been affected by more data coming in.