AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon EMR comparison

Amazon EMR and AWS Lake Formation are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon EMR is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.1, while AWS Lake Formation is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.3. Amazon EMR holds a 3.4% mindshare in CDW, compared to AWS Lake Formation’s 5.8% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Amazon EMR users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of AWS Lake Formation users who would recommend it.

Amazon EMR

Read 23 Amazon EMR reviews

1,863 Views
1,043 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Read 17 AWS Lake Formation reviews

1,711 Views
1,660 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

AWS Lake Formation

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Amazon EMR and AWS Lake Formation compete in the big data and cloud storage domain. AWS Lake Formation seems to have the upper hand in data governance and security, making it appealing for organizations with such priorities.

Features: Amazon EMR offers rapid data processing, flexibility in choosing processing frameworks like Spark and Hive, and integration with various data sources. AWS Lake Formation focuses on data lake management, providing fine-grained access controls, data security features, and a simplified setup process integrating well with the AWS ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Amazon EMR could improve its user interface for easier configuration and reduce complexity for new users. Enhanced automated scaling features would benefit users handling fluctuating workloads. Improved documentation could assist users encountering challenges. AWS Lake Formation could enhance integration with more third-party tools, provide more customization options, and expand its set of workflow templates for complex data operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EMR integrates seamlessly into existing AWS infrastructures, offering extensive customization and scaling options, but its complexity can be challenging. AWS Lake Formation simplifies deployment with guided workflows, making it user-friendly for non-experts. Both products offer robust support, though Lake Formation's guided workflows provide an edge in terms of user-friendliness.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon EMR's pay-as-you-go model can be cost-effective for extensive data processing tasks but may incur higher operational costs due to complexity. AWS Lake Formation aims to reduce data governance overhead costs, presenting better ROI for organizations prioritizing cost-efficiency, security, and streamlined operations.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon EMR Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon EMR

July 2025

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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

Amazon EMR

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

12th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (3rd)

AWS Lake Formation

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.8%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon EMR	3.4%
AWS Lake Formation	5.8%
Other	90.8%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Prashant Singh

Vice President -Product Management at Paytm

Seamless data integration enhances reporting efficiency and an easy setup

Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources. The service charges are based on processing only, depending on the resources used, which can help save money. It is easy to integrate with other services for storage, allowing data to be shifted to cheaper storage based on usage.

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JayShah5

Senior Engineer at Westpac Institutional Bank

Granular access control and efficient data orchestration boost data governance, but cross-platform integration requires improvement

The most valuable features of AWS Lake Formation were the access model itself, as it allows implementation of filters, Blueprints, and row-level and column-level security to mask data that shouldn't be accessed by certain entities, enabling granular control without exposing PII data. Another feature is the Glue Workflows, which allow orchestration of multiple Glue jobs to automate the entire process end-to-end. Additionally, the Blueprints feature, which provides connectors out of the box for ingesting data from different sources, was also beneficial. AWS Lake Formation is tightly integrated with IAM for authentication and authorization, as its permission model relies on IAM user groups and roles. This allows categorization of groups based on the access required by different users, enabling implementation of access policies within Lake Formation. This integration provides extensibility and scalability since user groups, once granted permissions, can manage further access control for new users or groups. While we were still exploring other features such as federated access for users outside AWS, we were in the early days of utilizing AWS Lake Formation. The scalability of AWS Lake Formation is quite good, allowing creation of user groups with grantable permissions, letting users manage access for new users onboarded to specific databases or tables, as these groups can grant permissions to extended users as needed. The stability and reliability of AWS Lake Formation are impressive; once permissions are applied, the access flow is efficient. When a user runs a query from Athena, it interacts with AWS Lake Formation first, which uses temporary credentials to access S3 buckets and presents data securely. This centralized permission management adds a layer of security, making it predictable in what users can access while applying necessary filters before data exposure.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance."

"The solution is scalable."

"The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions."

"The solution is pretty simple to set up."

"Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data."

"The project management is very streamlined."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"We are using applications, such as Splunk, Livy, Hadoop, and Spark. We are using all of these applications in Amazon EMR and they're helping us a lot."

More Amazon EMR pros

"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."

"The integration of AWS Lake Formation with the IAM for authentication and authorization is very good; I didn't have any problems in the setup and thought it was simple."

"There is no doubt that this place exceeded my expectations with its incredible ambiance, attentive service, and mouthwatering menu."

"The most valuable features of AWS Lake Formation were the access model itself, as it allows implementation of filters, Blueprints, and row-level and column-level security to mask data that shouldn't be accessed by certain entities, enabling granular control without exposing PII data."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

Cons

"The initial setup was time-consuming."

"The dashboard management could be better. Right now, it's lacking a bit."

"Amazon EMR can improve by adding some features, such as megastore services and HiveServer2. Additionally, the user interface could be better, similar to what Apache service provides, cross-platform services."

"Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences."

"There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB."

"The legacy versions of the solution are not supported in the new versions."

"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."

"There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange."

More Amazon EMR cons

"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."

"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."

"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."

"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."

"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."

"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."

More Amazon EMR pricing and cost advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EMR?

Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?

Compared to others, Amazon seems efficient and is considered good for Big Data workloads. Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 ( /products/amazon-ec2-reviews ) instances...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?

There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ) buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integrati...

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?

It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?

The pricing structure of AWS Lake Formation has been considered.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

There is a specific issue when we list the tables and database in AWS Lake Formation regarding the UI. When we list tables, and to provide context, here and in many companies, we have numerous tabl...

See all answers

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Compared 8% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Amazon EMR

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Compared 29% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 20% of the time

BigQuery vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 11% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR

August 2025

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

August 2025

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Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

No data available

Overview

Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) is a web service that makes it easy to quickly and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. Amazon EMR simplifies big data processing, providing a managed Hadoop framework that makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective for you to distribute and process vast amounts of your data across dynamically scalable Amazon EC2 instances.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Yelp

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon EMR

July 2025

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon EMR

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