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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling vs Apache Spark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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
7.0
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling offers cost savings and high ROI, especially for apps with high loads and experimental uses.
Sentiment score
6.6
Apache Spark enhances machine learning, cutting operational costs by up to 50%, with efficiency reliant on resources and expertise.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is praised for responsive support, extensive documentation, and effective issue resolution, despite integration challenges.
Sentiment score
5.9
Apache Spark support feedback varies, with mixed reviews on community forums, vendor support, and documentation adequacy.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling excels in adaptability, efficiently adjusting resources for stable, cost-effective operations with high scalability ratings.
Sentiment score
7.5
Apache Spark excels in scalability, efficiently handling large data workloads with ease, though it requires skilled infrastructure management.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is praised for stability and reliability, with effective auto-recovery despite occasional resource issues.
Sentiment score
7.5
Apache Spark is generally stable, trusted by companies; newer versions enhance reliability, though memory issues may arise without proper configuration.
MapReduce needs to perform numerous disk input and output operations, while Apache Spark can use memory to store and process data.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling needs improvements in pricing, automation, scalability, support, integration, customization, UI, connectivity, security, and performance.
Apache Spark requires improvements in scalability, usability, documentation, memory efficiency, real-time processing, and broader language support for better performance.
Amazon should provide more detailed training materials for people who are just starting to work with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling offers flexible pricing, with costs influenced by resource usage, instances, and additional services, with potential complexity.
Apache Spark is cost-effective but may incur expenses from hardware, cloud resources, or commercial support, impacting deployment costs.
It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning if a machine is used for only an hour, the pricing will be calculated for that hour only, not the entire month.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling efficiently scales resources, enhances performance, ensures security, and integrates well with AWS services, offering cost efficiency.
Apache Spark offers fast in-memory processing, scalable analytics, MLlib for machine learning, SQL support, and seamless integration with languages.
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling has the capability to multiply itself, which enables it to handle peak loads effectively.
Not all solutions can make this data fast enough to be used, except for solutions such as Apache Spark Structured Streaming.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
Ranking in Compute Service
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 9.7%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 12.0%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Awais Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
Pay-as-you-go and efficient with automated workload handling
I have been working with customers who use Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling for handling their workload on servers and scaling up the infrastructure as required.  As an instructor and cloud consultant, I help clients maintain and scale their infrastructure using this service to achieve zero downtime…
Omar Khaled - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowering data consolidation and fast decision-making with efficient big data processing
I can improve the organization's functions by taking less time to make decisions. To make the right decision, you need the right data, and a solution can provide this by hiring talent and employees who can consolidate data from different sources and organize it. Not all solutions can make this data fast enough to be used, except for solutions such as Apache Spark Structured Streaming. To make the right decision, you should have both accurate and fast data. Apache Spark itself is similar to the Python programming language. Python is a language with many libraries for mathematics and machine learning. Apache Spark is the solution, and within it, you have PySpark, which is the API for Apache Spark to write and run Python code. Within it, there are many APIs, including SQL APIs, allowing you to write SQL code within a Python function in Apache Spark. You can also use Apache Spark Structured Streaming and machine learning APIs.
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865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
The solution removes the need for hardware. We can easily create servers or machines. Just by clicking or specifying our requirements, like memory size or disk space, it's set up for us. The tool e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
The costing for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is equivalent to creating Amazon EC2 servers. For instance, if one dollar is paid for a single Amazon EC2 machine, the same cost applies for Amazon EC2 Auto ...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
Amazon should provide more detailed training materials for people who are just starting to work with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling. Documentation should be provided according to region. For example, in I...
What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
There is complexity when it comes to understanding the whole ecosystem, especially for beginners. I find it quite complex to understand how a Spark job is initiated, the roles of driver nodes, work...
 

Also Known As

AWS RAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.