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AWS Glue vs Elastic Search comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.9
Organizations find AWS Glue efficient and cost-effective despite overhead costs, though some consider alternatives due to budget constraints.
Sentiment score
5.9
Organizations had mixed ROI with Elasticsearch; some saved on costs using open-source, while others faced high licensing fees.
I advocate using Glue in such cases.
We have not purchased any licensed products, and our use of Elastic Search is purely open-source, contributing positively to our ROI.
It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss.
The main benefits observed from using Elastic Search include improvements in operational efficiency, along with cost, time, and resource savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
AWS Glue customer service is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, with mixed feedback on support speed, costs, and consistency.
Sentiment score
6.4
Elastic Search's support receives varied feedback, with users favoring community resources and some noting slower official assistance.
Upgrades occur every four months, and new developments coincide with version updates.
For complex Glue-related problems such as job failures or permission issues, their documentation is good, but having direct access to support helps cut down troubleshooting time significantly.
I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
AWS Glue is highly scalable and serverless, praised for easy resource management, but needs better parallel computation.
Sentiment score
7.2
Elastic Search is scalable, especially in cloud environments, but high-volume scalability requires careful planning and infrastructure investment.
It is beneficial to upgrade jobs, and we conduct extensive testing in development before migrating to production.
It can easily handle data from one terabyte to 100 terabytes or more, scaling nicely with larger datasets.
I would rate its scalability a ten.
I can actually add more storage and memory because I host it in the cloud.
I would rate the scalability of Elasticsearch as an eight.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
AWS Glue is stable and reliable with minor issues, scaling well, and efficient due to serverless architecture and tool integration.
Sentiment score
7.6
Elastic Search is generally stable, but performance can vary due to infrastructure, version changes, and configuration requirements.
AWS Glue is highly stable, and I would rate its stability as nine.
The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.
The stability of Elasticsearch was very high.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS Glue faces challenges with startup times, interface complexity, language limitations, cost, performance, integration, and multi-cloud compatibility.
Elastic Search requires enhancements in security, scalability, user experience, integration, documentation, and support for enterprise needs.
Migrating jobs from version 3.0 to 4.0 can present compatibility issues.
With AWS, I gather data from multiple sources, clean it up, normalize it, de-duplicate it, and make it presentable.
A more user-friendly and simpler process would help speed up the deployment process.
This can create problems for new developers because they have to quickly switch to another version.
It is primarily based on Unix or Linux-based operating systems and cannot be easily configured in Windows systems.
The consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are commendable, and they should keep up the good work.
 

Setup Cost

AWS Glue offers flexible, efficient serverless architecture but can be costly and unpredictable, especially for smaller organizations.
Elastic Search's free version can become costly for enterprises due to premium features, node-based pricing, and scalability challenges.
Costing depends on resource usage, and cost optimization may involve redesigning jobs for flexibility.
AWS charges based on runtime, which can be quite pricey.
The smallest cost for a project is around €700, while the largest can reach up to €7,000 based on the scale of the usage.
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
 

Valuable Features

AWS Glue excels with its easy interface, scalable ETL processing, seamless AWS integration, affordability, and serverless architecture.
Elastic Search offers efficient search, scalability, and integration with Kibana and Logstash, providing affordable features and handling diverse data.
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.
AWS Glue's most valuable features include its transformation capabilities, which provide data quality and shape for processing in ML or AI models.
AWS Glue has reduced efforts by 60%, which is the main benefit.
Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations.
The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch was the quick search capability, allowing us to search by any criteria needed.
Aggregation is faster than querying directly from a database, like Postgres or Vertica.
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Elastic Search
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS Glue is 17.2%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 2.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless integration and data preparation with robust transformation capabilities
AWS Glue's most valuable features include its transformation capabilities, which provide data quality and shape for processing in ML or AI models. It offers transformation options on canvas or through ETL pipelines, notebooks, and code. Additionally, it supports data preparation, cleaning, and filtering seamlessly. AWS Glue also enhances job scheduling and orchestration capabilities, integrating with AWS Glue Studio for comprehensive data workflow management.
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors
Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
It would be useful if a feature for renaming indices could be added without affecting the performance of other features. However, overall, the consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are already...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Glue vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.