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 8.0, while Apache is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 13.3% mindshare in H, compared to Apache’s 9.8% mindshare. Additionally, 85% 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 22 Amazon EMR reviews

1,035 Views
872 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Spark SQL

Read 14 Spark SQL reviews

824 Views
603 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

Spark SQL

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Spark SQL

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 845,564 peers since 2012

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 April 2025, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 13.3%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spark SQL is 9.8%, down from 11.6% 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

Sahil Taneja

Principal Consultant/Manager at Tenzing

Easy to use and do not require a learning curve

Spark SQL can improve the documentation they have provided. It can be a bit unclear at times. They could improve the documentation a bit more so that we can understand it more easily. Moreover, they could improve SparkUI to have more advanced versions of the performance and the queries and all.

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

"Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources."

"The project management is very streamlined."

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

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

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

"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."

More Amazon EMR pros

"It is a stable solution."

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

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

"One of Spark SQL's most beautiful features is running parallel queries to go through enormous data."

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

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

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

"The speed of getting data."

More Spark SQL pros

Cons

"Modules and strategies should be better handled and notified early in advance."

"The solution can become expensive if you are not careful."

"As people are shifting from legacy solutions to other technologies, Amazon EMR needs to add more features that give more flexibility in managing user data."

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

"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."

"There is room for improvement in pricing."

"The problem for us is it starts very slow."

"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."

More Amazon EMR cons

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

"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."

"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."

"There are many inconsistencies in syntax for the different querying tasks."

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

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

"I've experienced some incompatibilities when using the Delta Lake format."

More Spark SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."

"The cost of Amazon EMR is very high."

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

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

"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."

"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."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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."

More Amazon EMR pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"The solution is open-sourced and free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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?

The cost of Amazon EMR is a little bit expensive, especially considering the support package, which includes a gold package.

See all answers

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.

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

April 2025

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

Spark SQL

March 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

April 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: April 2025.

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