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Amazon EC2 vs Apache NiFi 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
6.5
Amazon EC2 reduces long-term costs through scalability, efficient resource management, and decreased infrastructure expenses, enhancing innovation and agility.
Sentiment score
4.8
Apache NiFi users experience significant time savings and improved efficiency, although exact cost benefits aren't always quantifiable.
I would say I have saved more than a week with Amazon EC2 compared to my previous on-premises setup.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Thanks to improvements on both our side in how we run processes and enhancements to Apache NiFi, we have reduced the time commitment to almost not needing to interact with Apache NiFi except for minor queue-clearance tasks, allowing it to run smoothly.
Data Engineer at The Kudelski Group
It supports not just ETL but also ELT, allowing us to save significant time.
Team Lead Technical Specialist (Production Support) at a recreational facilities/services company with 11-50 employees
There may be return on investment based on the technology and easily moving our workloads onto Apache NiFi from our previous system.
Senior Consultant - Data Analytics at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EC2 customer service satisfaction varies; premium support praised, free support criticized, and experiences differ based on needs.
Sentiment score
5.7
Apache NiFi users find support adequate, using documentation and forums, with mixed reviews on official support and positive Cloudera experiences.
The customer support is really good, and they are helpful whenever concerns are posted, responding immediately.
Cloud Data Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Customer support for Apache NiFi has been excellent, with minimal response times whenever we raise cases that cannot be directly addressed by logs.
Team Lead Technical Specialist (Production Support) at a recreational facilities/services company with 11-50 employees
I would rate the customer support of Apache NiFi a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Partner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon EC2's scalability impresses users with autoscaling, resource flexibility, and efficient cost-performance optimization for diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
6.7
Apache NiFi's scalability varies; some users succeed with clusters, while others struggle without Kubernetes, impacting implementation.
Depending on the workload we process, it remains stable since at the end of the day, it is just used as an orchestration tool that triggers the job while the heavy lifting is done on Spark servers.
Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Scaling up is fairly straightforward, provided you manage configurations effectively.
Data Engineer at The Kudelski Group
Based on the workload, more nodes can be added to make a bigger cluster, which enhances the cluster whenever needed.
Cloud Data Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EC2 is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues mitigated by best practices like multiple availability zones.
Sentiment score
7.4
Apache NiFi is generally stable but may face occasional crashes and reliability challenges, especially in distributed environments.
I have seen Apache NiFi crashing at times, which is one of the issues we have faced in production.
Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Apache NiFi is stable in most cases.
Senior Consultant - Data Analytics at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EC2 faces criticism for complexity, high costs, and limited integration, with calls for better automation and innovation.
Apache NiFi needs improved integration, UI, scalability, security features, and seamless CI/CD processes for enhanced usability and efficiency.
I have heard from multiple people that if you have an Amazon EC2 instance running and you stop it, the billing continues unless you terminate the Amazon EC2 instance.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Apache NiFi should have APIs or connectors that can connect seamlessly to other external entities, whether in the cloud or on-premises, creating a plug-and-play mechanism.
Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
The history of processed files should be more readable so that not only the centralized teams managing Apache NiFi but also application folks who are new to the platform can read how a specific document is traversing through Apache NiFi.
Team Lead Technical Specialist (Production Support) at a recreational facilities/services company with 11-50 employees
The initial error did not indicate it was related to memory or size limitations but appeared as a parsing error or something similar.
Data Engineer at The Kudelski Group
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 pricing is seen as cost-effective but complex, urging simplification for easier cost management and estimation.
Apache NiFi is an open-source solution with no setup costs, offering time-saving efficiencies despite potential integration expenses.
The pricing in Italy is considered a little bit high, but the product is worth it.
Partner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency with strong security, making it ideal for diverse workloads and AWS integration.
Apache NiFi simplifies data flow orchestration with drag-and-drop features, scalability, and integration, enhancing productivity and reliability.
With the cloud, deployment is easy, and within a minute, we can deploy the server and give it to the developers so they can work on it right away after deployment.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Amazon EC2 offers flexibility.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Apache NiFi has positively impacted my organization by definitely bridging the gap between the on-premises and cloud interaction until we find a solution to open the firewall for cloud components to directly interact with on-premises services.
Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Development has improved with a reduction in time spent being the main benefit; before we needed a matter of days to create the ingestion flows, but now it only takes a couple of hours to configure.
Senior Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The ease of use in Apache NiFi has helped my team because anyone can learn how to use it in a short amount of time, so we were able to get a lot of work done.
Senior Consultant - Data Analytics at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache NiFi
Ranking in Compute Service
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 11.3%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache NiFi is 9.5%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon EC211.3%
Apache NiFi9.5%
Other79.2%
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

BS
AWS Architect at Corvit Networks
Elasticity and auto scaling enhance performance and cost efficiency
Amazon EC2 features that I have found the most valuable and useful include elasticity and scalability, a variety of instance types, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, isolation, AMIs, integration with other services, Spot Instances, and high availability of reliability, user data, and EC2 metadata. These include Amazon EC2 images, image builder, and auto scaling as instance types, pricing models, and security with VPC, IAM roles, and security groups. The most beneficial features of Amazon EC2 for cloud operations are EC2 Auto Scaling with Elastic Load Balancing, which allows scale up and scale down, maintains high availability, and optimizes costs. Auto Scaling provides fault tolerance, performance optimization, and cost efficiency. A real-world benefit is that an instance automatically handles the load. When traffic drops, it reduces the number of instances. Other highly beneficial Amazon EC2 features include Spot Instances, multiple instance types, custom AMIs, VPC security groups, strong network and access security, and Elastic IPs, which are the static IPs for dynamic instances.
YV
architect with 51-200 employees
Unified data flows have simplified large-scale ingestion and have improved SLA reliability
Improvements can be made in the way of the UI. From the deployment perspective, Git configurations are available in 2.6 versions and 2.0 and later versions of Apache NiFi. Before 2.0, templates had to be created and stored in Apache NiFi Registry, which is available. However, templates still need to be imported and exported manually if moving from one environment to another environment. Even in 2.0 versions, although GitHub configurations are available, how it will function needs to be evaluated. Seamless CI/CD deployments are somewhat tricky and challenging when it comes to Apache NiFi with the proper approvals, moving that flow to another environment, and giving the proper RBAC controls. These are areas that could be improved. Documentation is adequate, but the only pain point is the deployment aspect.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Transportation Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
Advice on Setup Cost, Pricing, and Licensing for EC2: 1. Start Small & Use Free Tier if Possible For new users or small applications, the AWS Free Tier offers limited EC2 usage free for 12 mont...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote. In the future, I think you could explore quant...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache NiFi?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was fine, as the integration with the AWS Marketplace was very good. The pricing in Italy is considered a little bit high, but the product is ...
What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?
Improvements can be made in the way of the UI. From the deployment perspective, Git configurations are available in 2.6 versions and 2.0 and later versions of Apache NiFi. Before 2.0, templates had...
What is your primary use case for Apache NiFi?
Apache NiFi is used to fetch data from different sources and ingest it into different destinations. The entire platform depends on Apache NiFi for data transformation and data movement. Multiple so...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Macquarie Telecom Group, Dovestech, Slovak Telekom, Looker, Hastings Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EC2 vs. Apache NiFi and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.