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

AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon EMR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
22
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd)
AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.2%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Ramesh Raghavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better
There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.

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."
"This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable."
"The project management is very streamlined."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Amazon EMR's most valuable features are processing speed and data storage capacity."
"The security of the managed workflow and the managed services are the best features for us. Since we inherited their security model and it's all managed services, those are the key benefits for our clients."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
 

Cons

"There were times where they would release new versions and it seemed to end up breaking old versions, which is very strange."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"The initial setup was time-consuming."
"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."
"The solution can become expensive if you are not careful."
"Modules and strategies should be better handled and notified early in advance."
"We don't have much control. If we have multiple users, if they want to scale up, the cost will go and increase and we don't know how we can restrict that price part."
"The most complicated thing is configuring to the cluster and ensure it's running correctly."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"You need to have data experience to use the product."
"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."
"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
The cost of Amazon EMR is a little bit expensive, especially considering the support package, which includes a gold package.
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences. This aspect could be improved to make them more efficient.
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon EMR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.