Amazon EMR vs Spark SQL comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Apache are both solutions in the Hadoop category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while Apache is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 13.8% mindshare in H, compared to Apache’s 10.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Apache users who would recommend it.

Amazon EMR

Read 23 Amazon EMR reviews

816 Views
672 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Spark SQL

Read 14 Spark SQL reviews

696 Views
483 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

Spark SQL

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon EMR and Spark SQL based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Hadoop solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EMR vs. Spark SQL Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Spark SQL

June 2025

Download the complete report

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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 Hadoop

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (12th)

Spark SQL

Ranking in Hadoop

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 13.8%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spark SQL is 10.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Hadoop

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.

Read full review

SurjitChoudhury

Data engineer at Cocos pt

Offers the flexibility to handle large-scale data processing

My experience with the initial setup of Spark SQL was relatively smooth. Understanding the system wasn't overly difficult because the data was structured in databases, and we could use notebooks for coding in Python or Java. Configuring networks and running scripts to load data into the database were routine tasks that didn't pose significant challenges. The flexibility to use different languages for coding and the ability to process data using key-value pairs in Python made the setup adaptable. Once we received the source data, processing it in SparkSQL involved writing scripts to create dimension and fact tables, which became a standard part of our workflow. Setting up Spark SQL was reasonably quick, but sometimes we face performance issues, especially during data loading into the SQL Server data warehouse. Sequencing notebooks for efficient job runs is crucial, and managing complex tasks with multiple notebooks requires careful tracking. Exploring ways to optimize this process could be beneficial. However, once you are familiar with the database architecture and project tools, understanding and adapting to the system become more straightforward.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The project management is very streamlined."

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

"This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable."

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

"When we grade big jobs from on-prem to the cloud, we do it in EMR with Spark."

"One of the valuable features about this solution is that it's managed services, so it's pretty stable, and scalable as much as you wish. It has all the necessary distributions. With some additional work, it's also possible to change to a Spark version with the latest version of EMR. It also has Hudi, so we are leveraging Apache Hudi on EMR for change data capture, so then it comes out-of-the-box in EMR."

"The solution helps us manage huge volumes of data."

"The solution is pretty simple to set up."

More Amazon EMR pros

"The performance is one of the most important features. It has an API to process the data in a functional manner."

"The team members don't have to learn a new language and can implement complex tasks very easily using only SQL."

"The speed of getting data."

"The solution is easy to understand if you have basic knowledge of SQL commands."

"The stability was fine. It behaved as expected."

"Offers a variety of methods to design queries and incorporates the regular SQL syntax within tasks."

"Data validation and ease of use are the most valuable features."

"Spark SQL's efficiency in managing distributed data and its simplicity in expressing complex operations make it an essential part of our data pipeline."

More Spark SQL pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in pricing."

"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."

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

"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."

"The most complicated thing is configuring to the cluster and ensure it's running correctly."

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

More Amazon EMR cons

"In the next release, maybe the visualization of some command-line features could be added."

"It would be useful if Spark SQL integrated with some data visualization tools."

"In terms of improvement, the only thing that could be enhanced is the stability aspect of Spark SQL."

"Being a new user, I am not able to find out how to partition it correctly. I probably need more information or knowledge. In other database solutions, you can easily optimize all partitions. I haven't found a quicker way to do that in Spark SQL. It would be good if you don't need a partition here, and the system automatically partitions in the best way. They can also provide more educational resources for new users."

"It takes a bit of time to get used to using this solution versus Pandas as it has a steep learning curve."

"The solution needs to include graphing capabilities. Including financial charts would help improve everything overall."

"It would be beneficial for aggregate functions to include a code block or toolbox that explains its calculations or supported conditional statements."

"In the next update, we'd like to see better performance for small points of data. It is possible but there are better tools that are faster and cheaper."

More Spark SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."

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

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

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

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."

"The price of the solution is 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."

More Amazon EMR pricing and cost advice

"We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small."

"The on-premise solution is quite expensive in terms of hardware, setting up the cluster, memory, hardware and resources. It depends on the use case, but in our case with a shared cluster which is quite large, it is quite expensive."

"There is no license or subscription for this solution."

"The solution is open-sourced and free."

"We use the open-source version, so we do not have direct support from Apache."

"The solution is bundled with Palantir Foundry at no extra charge."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

10%

Healthcare Company

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.

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 Spark SQL?

Spark SQL's efficiency in managing distributed data and its simplicity in expressing complex operations make it an essential part of our data pipeline.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spark SQL?

We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spark SQL?

In terms of improvement, the only thing that could be enhanced is the stability aspect of Spark SQL. There could be additional features that I haven't explored but the current solution for working ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR

June 2025

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

Spark SQL

May 2025

Download Spark SQL product report

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)

Spark SQL is a Spark module for structured data processing. Unlike the basic Spark RDD API, the interfaces provided by Spark SQL provide Spark with more information about the structure of both the data and the computation being performed. There are several ways to interact with Spark SQL including SQL and the Dataset API. When computing a result the same execution engine is used, independent of which API/language you are using to express the computation. This unification means that developers can easily switch back and forth between different APIs based on which provides the most natural way to express a given transformation.

Apache

Sample Customers

Yelp

UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, Hitachi Solutions

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Spark SQL

June 2025

Free Report: Amazon EMR vs. Spark SQL

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Spark SQL and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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