No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AWS AppSync vs AWS Glue comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 November 2026, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS AppSync is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Glue is 7.4%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Glue7.4%
AWS AppSync1.2%
Other91.4%
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."
"I like its integration and ability to handle all data-related tasks."
"It's very good to manage."
"AWS Glue's most valuable features include its transformation capabilities, which provide data quality and shape for processing in ML or AI models."
"Data catalog and triggers are the two best features for me. AWS Glue has its own data catalog, which makes it great and really easy to use. Triggers are also really good for scheduling the ETL process."
"Its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and highly secure architecture are some of the most valuable features."
"AWS Glue is a stable and easy-to-use solution."
"AWS Glue's best features are scalability and cloud-based features."
"I appreciate AWS Glue for its cost-effectiveness."
 

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 mapping area and the use of the data catalog from Glue could be better."
"I haven't looked into Glue in terms of seeking out flaws. I've not come across missing features."
"The process of entering environment variables in AWS Glue requires navigating to a different page, which could be streamlined."
"The interface for AWS Glue could improve, they do not put a lot of details. You can write the code, in PySpark or in Scala, which is a big advantage, it is only easy to use for a developer. It will be difficult for new users to enter the cloud environment."
"The point for improvement in AWS Glue would be the dynamic allocation of resources while utilizing Lambda functions."
"In terms of improvement, the performance of AWS Glue could be faster."
"There could be an enhanced way of managing pure metadata management or data cataloging."
"It is very difficult to learn the tool and remember the syntaxes comparatively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, and it is a pay-as-you-go model."
"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."
"AWS Glue follows a pay-as-you-go model, wherein the cost of the data you use will be counted as a monthly bill."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"The pricing is a bit higher than other solutions like Athena and EC2. If the pricing becomes more scaled or flexible, it will be good because you have to pay 44 cents just for one DPU for an hour. If you increase DPUs to 5 or 10, the pricing gets multiplied. There are also some time limits like 0 to 10 minutes or 10 to 20 minutes. If the pricing is according to the minutes, it would be better because you have to limit your job to 10 minutes or 20 minutes."
"If you are using the solution for an enterprise business, it will be expensive."
"AWS Glue is a high-priced solution that bills the client $150,000 to $250,000 annually."
"Its price is good. We pay as we go or based on the usage, which is a good thing for us because it is simple to forecast for the tool. It is good in terms of the financial planning of the company, and it is a good way to estimate the cost. It is also simple for our clients. In my opinion, it is one of the best tools in the market for ETL processes because of the fact that you pay as you use, which separates it from other big tools such as PowerCenter, Pentaho Data Integration, and Talend."
"The solution's pricing is based on DPUs so it is a good idea to optimize use or it can get expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
22%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Healthcare Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
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: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.