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AWS AppSync vs AWS Glue 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

AWS AppSync
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Glue
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS AppSync is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Glue is 7.8%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Glue7.8%
AWS AppSync1.1%
Other91.1%
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Akil Saji - PeerSpot reviewer
AWS Cloud Developer at Mobil80 Solutions and Services Pvt. Ltd.
Ease of creating APIs with ongoing updates needed for automation
AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs. The ease of use is a main advantage, allowing even beginners to start from scratch and learn through AppSync. Before AWS, developing and managing APIs was quite complex. AWS provided AppSync, which assists developers and startup founders. Startups blooming everywhere benefit from this service, welcoming those who lack prior knowledge. When working on AWS, I notice that Amazon regularly implements new features. For instance, with the Lambda service, AWS is transitioning from an old editor to a new one. Similarly, AppSync frequently introduces updates and changes. This trend is making the user interface more accessible, even for individuals without a technical background. Additionally, the cost is attractive, as AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. These factors make AppSync both easy to use and cost-effective.
NS
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution improves ETL performance but faces challenges with version upgrades
For ETL, I feel the performance is excellent. If I create jobs in a standard way, the performance is great, and maintenance is also seamless. It is serverless, so I do not need to worry about other integrations. It runs on a serverless VM. Glue services from AWS are regularly upgraded with new properties and functions. We use PySpark and other frameworks, which help customize our ETL process in a standard way. During our process, we utilized the typical SQL ITIL process standard in Glue-oriented ETL services, which helped us improve performance and time. AWS running time, mostly during the morning, saved us time compared to the old ETL method. There are many email notifications once a job is successful or fails, and we get notifications using SES or AWS's Simple Notification Service. Glue is integrated with both email alerts, and we are responsible for managing the full data journey from end to end.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Support for multiple data sources and formats is a fantastic feature."
"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"If I'm working with big data, common languages like Python work quite nicely, which is advantageous."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The most valuable feature for me is the visual interface of AWS Glue."
"AWS Glue's most valuable features are the data catalog, including crawlers and tables, and Glue Studio, which means you don't have to use custom code."
"AWS Glue's best features are scalability and cloud-based features."
"AWS Glue is a stable and easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Glue is that it provides a GUI format with a drag-and-drop feature."
"The AWS Glue Data Catalog provides metadata management and schema discovery. AWS Glue simplifies data transformation with automatic schema detection, incremental data updates, and integration with other AWS services."
 

Cons

"In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial."
"Moving to other clouds is impossible without significantly rearchitecting your applications."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved."
"It is quite clunky and code-heavy, which is my biggest problem."
"AWS Glue is more costly compared to other tools like Airflow."
"The interface for AWS Glue could improve, they do not put a lot of details."
"Not enough resources or services are available to run managed Spark jobs within the solution."
"Beginners need additional support as it currently lacks some features required for complex transformations, often necessitating custom Python coding."
"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The interesting thing we found is that it was a little strange at the beginning. The way Glue works is not very straightforward. After trying different things, for example, we used just the console to create jobs. Then we realized that things were not working as expected. After researching and learning more, we realized that even though the console creates the script for the ETL processes, you need to modify or write your own script in Spark to do everything you want it to do. For example, we are pulling data from our source database and our application database, which is in Aurora. From there, we are doing the ETL to transform the data and write the results into Redshift. But what was surprising is that it's almost like whatever you want to do, you can do it with Glue because you have the option to put together your own script. Even though there are many functionalities and many connections, you have the opportunity to write your own queries to do whatever transformations you need to do. It's a little deceiving that some options are supposed to work in a certain way when you set them up in the console, but then they are not exactly working the right way or not as expected. It would be better if they provided more examples and more documentation on options."
"It needs improvements in terms of Java support and the turnaround time for our problems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, and it is a pay-as-you-go model."
"AWS Glue follows a pay-as-you-go model, wherein the cost of the data you use will be counted as a monthly bill."
"It is not expensive. AWS Glue works on the serverless architecture. We get charged for the time the server is up. For our use case, we have to use it once in a day, and it is not expensive for us."
"AWS Glue uses a pay-as-you-go approach which is helpful. The price of the overall solution is low and is a great advantage."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"The current cost is around forty to fifty thousand a month."
"I rate the tool an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is expensive."
"AWS Glue is a paid service that doesn't come under the free trial of AWS."
"The solution's pricing is based on DPUs so it is a good idea to optimize use or it can get expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Healthcare Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS AppSync?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good and easy. About the pricing and setup cost, there is no major setup cost required for AWS AppSync, which is a really great thing becau...
What needs improvement with AWS AppSync?
The current features of AWS AppSync are enough for any developer, but it has some areas for improvement. AWS AppSync can provide first-class support for SQL RDS since writing SQL via VTL is clunky ...
What is your primary use case for AWS AppSync?
My main use case for AWS AppSync is to deploy the application by connecting my frontend and backend application. AWS AppSync serves as a GraphQL API Gateway that sits between my frontend and backen...
How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?
AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...
 

Also Known As

AppSync
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACBL, Puresec, IDT, ASU, Public Good, cookpad, ALDO, ticketmaster
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS AppSync vs. AWS Glue and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.