Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
7.4
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Compute Service (4th)
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 July 2025, in the Java Frameworks category, the mindshare of Apache Spark is 7.9%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Boot is 40.1%, down from 42.7% 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

Dunstan Matekenya - PeerSpot reviewer
Open-source solution for data processing with portability
Apache Spark is known for its ease of use. Compared to other available data processing frameworks, it is user-friendly. While many choices now exist, Spark remains easy to use, particularly with Python. You can utilize familiar programming styles similar to Pandas in Python, including object-oriented programming. Another advantage is its portability. I can prototype and perform some initial tasks on my laptop using Spark without needing to be on Databricks or any cloud platform. I can transfer it to Databricks or other platforms, such as AWS. This flexibility allows me to improve processing even on my laptop. For instance, if I'm processing large amounts of data and find my laptop becoming slow, I can quickly switch to Spark. It handles small and large datasets efficiently, making it a versatile tool for various data processing needs.
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

"Provides a lot of good documentation compared to other solutions."
"I found the solution stable. We haven't had any problems with it."
"The most significant advantage of Spark 3.0 is its support for DataFrame UDF Pandas UDF features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its capacity for processing large amounts of data."
"DataFrame: Spark SQL gives the leverage to create applications more easily and with less coding effort."
"The processing time is very much improved over the data warehouse solution that we were using."
"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."
"The distribution of tasks, like the seamless map-reduce functionality, is quite impressive."
"Spring Boot could improve its integration with the major cloud providers. Connectivity with cloud solutions isn't easy compared to other frameworks like Django and Python."
"It's very easy to get started. It's very quick. Most of the configurations are already available. So not much time is spent on setting up things. One can quickly set up and then get rolling."
"Spring Boot's most valuable functionalities include inversion of control, dependency injection, and the ability to gather all services, models, and controllers together for easy connectivity to your REST API, as well as the ability to build a modular response and request system. It seamlessly integrates with various backends, such as SQL, events, and messaging systems, making it a user-friendly and efficient Java tool. Additionally, it functions as a reliable business transaction layer, providing excellent support for front-end and back-end visual tools."
"This solution is really user friendly. In terms of prototyping, it's really fast to build the applications we want to test to complete a proof of concept."
"Spring Boot is much easier when it comes to the configuration, setup, installation, and deployment of your applications, compared to any kind of MVC framework. It has everything within a single framework."
"The API gateway and cloud configuration allows us to configure the properties outside of the service with respect to enrollment."
"The solution's framework is stable."
"The platform is easy for developers to download."
 

Cons

"There were some problems related to the product's compatibility with a few Python libraries."
"At the initial stage, the product provides no container logs to check the activity."
"Include more machine learning algorithms and the ability to handle streaming of data versus micro batch processing."
"The solution needs to optimize shuffling between workers."
"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."
"When using Spark, users may need to write their own parallelization logic, which requires additional effort and expertise."
"The setup I worked on was really complex."
"We use big data manager but we cannot use it as conditional data so whenever we're trying to fetch the data, it takes a bit of time."
"When we change versions, we run into issues."
"The performance could be better."
"The current state of Spring Boot's cloud layer requires further development, especially for collecting Java functions for cloud platforms like GCP Cloudground. Having to write every single API request in a single class can be a cumbersome and time-consuming task that is not ideal for Java developers. Additionally, having all API calls in one class and making it the main class presents problems with package visibility. Therefore, there is much room for improvement in the Spring Cloud area."
"Spring Boot's cost could be cheaper."
"This solution could be improved if it offered greater integration and was more compatible with other solutions."
"If you want to create large microservices applications, you need to connect several applications and services to each other. It is very complicated, and Spring Boot does not have an integrated solution for it."
"The cloud packaging is not very straightforward."
"The cross framework compatibility has some shortcomings. With JUnit Test Runner and Spring Boot, it's really tedious to make them both work to write the test cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I did not pay anything when using the tool on cloud services, but I had to pay on the compute side. The tool is not expensive compared with the benefits it offers. I rate the price as an eight out of ten."
"Apache Spark is an open-source solution, and there is no cost involved in deploying the solution on-premises."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"The solution is affordable and there are no additional licensing costs."
"Apache Spark is an open-source tool."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
"The solution is free."
"This is an open-source product."
"Spring Boot is open source. It's a free tool and free framework."
"Spring Boot is an open-source solution."
"Spring Boot is an open source solution, it is free to use."
"Spring Boot is free; even the Spring Tools Suite for Eclipse is free."
"Spring Boot is open source."
"If you want support there is paid enterprise version with support available."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Java Frameworks solutions are best for your needs.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. Spring Boot and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.