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Anaconda vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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

Anaconda
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Anaconda is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 18.2%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Rohan Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides all the frameworks and makes it easy to create environments for multiple projects
The best thing is that it provides all the frameworks and makes it easy to create environments for multiple projects using Anaconda. It is easy for a beginner to learn to use Anaconda. Comparatively, it is easier than using virtual environments or other environments because of the Conda environment. However, there are many things in Anaconda that people need to be aware of, so it can be challenging.
ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Anaconda Navigator, we have been able to use multiple IDEs such as JupyterLab, Jupyter Notebook, Spyder, Visual Studio Code, and RStudio in one place. The platform-agnostic package manager, "Conda", makes life easy when it comes to managing and installing packages."
"The solution is stable."
"The product is responsive, sleek and has a beautiful interface that is pleasant to use. It helps users to easily share code."
"It's interesting. It's user friendly. That's what makes it outstanding among the others. It has a collection of R, Python, and others. Their platform strategy has a collection of many other visualization tools, apart from Spyder and RStudio, which is really helpful for data science. For any data science professional, Anaconda is really handy. It has almost all the tools for data science."
"It has a lot of functionality available, supports many libraries, and the developers are continually improving it."
"The virtual environment is very good."
"The documentation is excellent and the solution has a very large and active community that supports it."
"The most valuable feature is the set of libraries that are used to support the functionality that we require."
"In the manufacturing industry, Databricks can be beneficial to use because of machine learning. It is useful for tasks, such as product analysis or predictive maintenance."
"I would rate them ten out of ten."
"It's very simple to use Databricks Apache Spark."
"I work in the data science field and I found Databricks to be very useful."
"The initial setup phase of Databricks was good."
"Databricks is hosted on the cloud. It is very easy to collaborate with other team members who are working on it. It is production-ready code, and scheduling the jobs is easy."
"What I like about Databricks is that it's one of the most popular platforms that give access to folks who are trying not just to do exploratory work on the data but also go ahead and build advanced modeling and machine learning on top of that."
"Databricks provides a consistent interface for data engineers to work with data in a consistent language on a single integrated platform for ingesting, processing, and serving data to the end user."
 

Cons

"A lot of people and companies are investing in creating automated data cleaning and processing environments. Anaconda is a bit behind in that area."
"I think that the framework can be improved to make it easier for people to discover and use things on their own."
"It crashes once in a while. In case of a reboot or something unexpected, the unseen code part will get diminished, and it relatively takes longer than other applications when a reboot is happening. They can improve in these areas. They can also bring some database software. They have software for analytics and virtualization. However, they don't have any software for the database."
"One feature that I would like to see is being able to use a different language in a different cell, which would allow me to mix R and Python together."
"Anaconda should be optimized for RAM consumption."
"The interface could be improved. Other solutions, like Visual Studio, have much better UI."
"When you install Anaconda for the first time, it's really difficult to update it."
"It also takes up a lot of space."
"The stability of the clusters or the instances of Databricks would be better if it was a much more stable environment. We've had issues with crashes."
"In the next release, I would like to see more optimization features."
"There could be more support for automated machine learning in the database. I would like to see more ways to do analysis so that the reporting is more understandable."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation of processes and how it works."
"The solution has some scalability and integration limitations when consolidating legacy systems."
"The product cannot be integrated with a popular coding IDE."
"The solution could be improved by adding a feature that would make it more user-friendly for our team. The feature is simple, but it would be useful. Currently, our team is more familiar with the language R, but Databricks requires the use of Jupyter Notebooks which primarily supports Python. We have tried using RStudio, but it is not a fully integrated solution. To fully utilize Databricks, we have to use the Jupyter interface. One feature that would make it easier for our team to adopt the Jupyter interface would be the ability to select a specific variable or line of code and execute it within a cell. This feature is available in other Jupyter Notebooks outside of Databricks and in our own IDE, but it is not currently available within Databricks. If this feature were added, it would make the transition to using Databricks much smoother for our team."
"The Databricks cluster can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company uses the free version of the tool. There is also a paid version of the tool available."
"Anaconda is free to use, but in terms of hardware costs, you might need heavy GPUs to run CUDA and other demanding tasks."
"The licensing costs for Anaconda are reasonable."
"The product is open-source and free to use."
"The tool is open-source."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"The licensing costs of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"The product pricing is moderate."
"The solution is affordable."
"It is an expensive tool. The licensing model is a pay-as-you-go one."
"The solution is based on a licensing model."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Anaconda?
The tool's most valuable feature is its cloud-based nature, allowing accessibility from anywhere. Additionally, using Jupyter Notebook makes it easy to handle bugs and errors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Anaconda?
Anaconda does not require a pricing structure, and it is available as an open-source tool. The features of Python, Jupyter, and others are free to use.
What needs improvement with Anaconda?
Anaconda consumes a significant amount of processing memory when working on it. This is something that needs improvement as it can impact performance.
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
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...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LinkedIn, NASA, Boeing, JP Morgan, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, DARPA, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, Cisco, Thomson Reuters, IBM, Bridgestone
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaconda vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.