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Apache Spark vs Spring Boot comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Apache Spark
Ranking in Java Frameworks
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Compute Service (5th)
Spring Boot
Ranking in Java Frameworks
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Java Frameworks category, the mindshare of Apache Spark is 5.6%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Boot is 41.4%, down from 43.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Java Frameworks
 

Q&A Highlights

MT
Aug 28, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, able to expand, and handle large amounts of data well
We use batch processing. It works well with our formats and file versions. There's a lot of functionality. In our pipeline each hour, we make a copy of data from MongoDB, of the changes from MongoDB to some specific file. Each time pipeline copied all of the data, it would do it each time without changes to all of the tables. Tables have a lot of data, and in the last MongoDB version, there is a possibility to read only changed data. This reduced the cost and configuration of the cluster, and we saved about $150,000. The solution is scalable. It's a stable product.
RajuGottupalli - PeerSpot reviewer
Minimizes a lot of coding, improves the time to market, and is easily deployable and configurable
Spring Boot is a bounded framework. The services we develop are purely synchronous services, so there's a blocking and waiting state. This is a big problem in microservices. To avoid this problem, we have to make the service a reactive session. It has to be reactive to a particular load, particular condition, or based on the number of requests hitting the particular service. All these factors make the service a reactor. There's another module in which Spring Boot provides spring reflex. This module enables the reactiveness of the service, meaning that it eliminates the blocking and waiting state. For example, if you're sending a get operation or a post operation, there won't be any waiting for it to actually hit that particular network to get the data from another service. It continuously flows the request, and there is a zero waiting pack. Vert.x is another good framework where there are similar features or similar benefits with having a reactive session. Spring Boot is a license resource, so it's a framework where we can customize our solution or a particular requirement to build a good solution using Spring Boot. But it's an opinionated framework, meaning that it's completely bounded. You have only one direction to find a solution, whereas Vert.x is an unopinionated framework. Unopinionated is a kind of a toolkit where you can have more optimization and a more flexible solution, which is suitable to your requirements. In Spring Boot, the opportunities are limited. With Vert.x and other programming tools, we have multiple options to explore the solution in a different way and achieve a nonfunctional requirement of thousands transactions in a second. Spring Boot might not support this kind of non-functional requirement. Vert.X is a very good solution to solve critical NFRs for a particular application.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most significant advantage of Spark 3.0 is its support for DataFrame UDF Pandas UDF features."
"One of Apache Spark's most valuable features is that it supports in-memory processing, the execution of jobs compared to traditional tools is very fast."
"Apache Spark is known for its ease of use. Compared to other available data processing frameworks, it is user-friendly."
"Its scalability and speed are very valuable. You can scale it a lot. It is a great technology for big data. It is definitely better than a lot of earlier warehouse or pipeline solutions, such as Informatica. Spark SQL is very compliant with normal SQL that we have been using over the years. This makes it easy to code in Spark. It is just like using normal SQL. You can use the APIs of Spark or you can directly write SQL code and run it. This is something that I feel is useful in Spark."
"The most crucial feature for us is the streaming capability. It serves as a fundamental aspect that allows us to exert control over our operations."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Spark is its memory processing because it processes data over RAM rather than disk, which is much more efficient and fast."
"The main feature that we find valuable is that it is very fast."
"I found the solution stable. We haven't had any problems with it."
"Spring Boot's main feature is that it's great for DevOps because you can write your own application. You don't need to install Apache Tomcat. You can create your project easily with a few clicks."
"The solution is easy to use; I primarily employ integrated templates such as the REST template."
"The Spring Cloud Gateway, Load Balancer are the valuable features. Apart from them, handling a sync call, then multiple service communication through field clients are also useful features."
"This is a stable solution that is being used in the HR space."
"The platform is easy for developers to download."
"I have found the starter solutions valuable, as well as integration with other products."
"The configuration setup in Spring Boot is pretty simplified compared to Hibernate ORM."
"The cloud version is very scalable."
 

Cons

"The solution’s integration with other platforms should be improved."
"At times during the deployment process, the tool goes down, making it look less robust. To take care of the issues in the deployment process, users need to do manual interventions occasionally."
"Spark could be improved by adding support for other open-source storage layers than Delta Lake."
"We've had problems using a Python process to try to access something in a large volume of data. It crashes if somebody gives me the wrong code because it cannot handle a large volume of data."
"Apache Spark lacks geospatial data."
"The management tools could use improvement. Some of the debugging tools need some work as well. They need to be more descriptive."
"The graphical user interface (UI) could be a bit more clear. It's very hard to figure out the execution logs and understand how long it takes to send everything. If an execution is lost, it's not so easy to understand why or where it went. I have to manually drill down on the data processes which takes a lot of time. Maybe there could be like a metrics monitor, or maybe the whole log analysis could be improved to make it easier to understand and navigate."
"It's not easy to install."
"It's difficult to explain to junior developers what it does under the hood."
"We'd like to have fewer updates."
"Nothing really comes to mind in terms of areas of improvement."
"Having to restart the application to reload properties."
"Spring Boot's cost could be cheaper."
"It needs to be simplified, more user-friendly."
"They should include tutorial videos for learning new features."
"This solution could be improved if it offered greater integration and was more compatible with other solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"The tool is an open-source product. If you're using the open-source Apache Spark, no fees are involved at any time. Charges only come into play when using it with other services like Databricks."
"It is an open-source platform. We do not pay for its subscription."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
"On the cloud model can be expensive as it requires substantial resources for implementation, covering on-premises hardware, memory, and licensing."
"It is an open-source solution, it is free of charge."
"Spring Boot is free; even the Spring Tools Suite for Eclipse is free."
"I am using a free version of Spring Boot."
"I use the free version of Spring Boot."
"Spring Boot is open source."
"As Spring Boot is an open-source tool, it's free."
"The solution is an open-source tool."
"Spring Boot is an open-source solution."
"This is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
There is complexity when it comes to understanding the whole ecosystem, especially for beginners. I find it quite complex to understand how a Spark job is initiated, the roles of driver nodes, work...
What do you like most about Spring Boot?
1. Open Source2. Excellent Community Support -- Widely used across different projects -- so your search for answers would be easy and almost certain.3. Extendable Stack with a wide array of availab...
Which is better - Spring Boot or Eclipse MicroProfile?
Springboot is a Java-based solution that is very popular and easy to use. You can use it to build applications quickly and confidently. Springboot has a very large, helpful learning community, whic...
Which is better - Spring Boot or Jakarta EE?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Spring Boot or Jakarta EE application creation software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Spring Boot. Spring Boot offe...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
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Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. Spring Boot and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.