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Amazon SageMaker vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 SageMaker
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
AI Development Platforms (4th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
8th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Amazon SageMaker is 3.5%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon SageMaker3.5%
Starburst Galaxy1.4%
Other95.1%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

NeerajPokala - PeerSpot reviewer
Machine Learning Engineer at Macquarie Group
Automation has transformed document review and reduces manual effort in financial workflows
There will be many features in Amazon SageMaker itself, but we don't know whether the feature is there or not, particularly the documentation part. Whatever the new releases will be, they will not post very fast. It is very easy to deploy Amazon SageMaker. The documentation is also very good. It is good because we are able to collaborate with our notebooks. At a time we can develop simultaneously and work on different use cases in the same notebook itself.
NK
Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies
Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery
Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They are doing a good job of evolving."
"Allows you to create API endpoints."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SageMaker is that you don't have to do any programming in order to perform some of your use cases."
"I have seen a return on investment, probably a factor of four or five."
"The support is very good with well-trained engineers whose training curriculum is rigorous."
"The deployment is very good, where you only need to press a few buttons."
"We were able to use the product to automate processes."
"I recommend SageMaker for ML projects if you need to build models from scratch."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources."
"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."
"Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to rethink the strategy for data and architect data differently; instead of having multiple data marts and siloed data marts, we have a unified vision, and that is how it is changing."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."
"Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
 

Cons

"They could add features such as managing environments, experiment management across those environments, and the integration with training datasets as you go through those experiments."
"The main challenge with Amazon SageMaker is the integrations."
"Amazon SageMaker could improve in the area of hyperparameter tuning by offering more automated suggestions and tips during the tuning process."
"One area for improvement is the pricing, which can be quite high."
"One area for improvement is the pricing, which can be quite high."
"Comparatively, GCP offers very low cost when compared to Amazon SageMaker. People are moving from Amazon SageMaker to GCP because of the cost constraints."
"There are other better solutions for large data, such as Databricks."
"The training modules could be enhanced. We had to take in-person training to fully understand SageMaker, and while the trainers were great, I think more comprehensive online modules would be helpful."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."
"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"On average, customers pay about $300,000 USD per month."
"I would rate the solution's price a ten out of ten since it is very high."
"There is no license required for the solution since you can use it on demand."
"SageMaker is worth the money for our use case."
"The support costs are 10% of the Amazon fees and it comes by default."
"The solution is relatively cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
What do you like most about Amazon SageMaker?
We've had experience with unique ML projects using SageMaker. For example, we're developing a platform similar to ChatGPT that requires models. We utilize Amazon SageMaker to create endpoints for t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon SageMaker?
If you manage it effectively, their pricing is reasonable. It's similar to anything in the cloud; if you don't manage it properly, it can be expensive, but if you do, it's fine.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
One way Starburst Galaxy can be improved is through AI enablement. I have not seen how the user interface is going to function or how users can interact with the data products on Starburst Galaxy u...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is to use it as a data federation tool, collect data from various data sources, and have a unified view of the data. A quick specific example of how I use Star...
 

Also Known As

AWS SageMaker, SageMaker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DigitalGlobe, Thomson Reuters Center for AI and Cognitive Computing, Hotels.com, GE Healthcare, Tinder, Intuit
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Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SageMaker vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.