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

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
3.8
Organizations using Elastic Search reported improved efficiency, faster performance, cost savings, and enhanced data management, emphasizing positive outcomes.
I advocate using Glue in such cases.
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We have not purchased any licensed products, and our use of Elastic Search is purely open-source, contributing positively to our ROI.
Software Engineer at Government of India
It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss.
SOC A2 at Innodata-ISOGEN
The main benefits observed from using Elastic Search include improvements in operational efficiency, along with cost, time, and resource savings.
Senior Devops Engineer at Ubique Digital LTD
 

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
6.3
Elastic Search customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some users note occasional slow responses.
Upgrades occur every four months, and new developments coincide with version updates.
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
For P1 tickets, they provide very immediate quick responses and join calls to support and troubleshoot the issue accordingly.
Elastic Engineer at The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
The customer support for Elastic Search is one of the best I have ever tried.
Software Developer at a media company with 10,001+ employees
They have always been really responsible and responsive to my requests.
Security Lead at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
 

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 and reliable for high-volume tasks, though some users face challenges with cost and complex data handling.
It is beneficial to upgrade jobs, and we conduct extensive testing in development before migrating to production.
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
It can easily handle data from one terabyte to 100 terabytes or more, scaling nicely with larger datasets.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
We can search through that document quite easily, sometimes in 7 milliseconds, sometimes one or two milliseconds.
Product Engineer at A3L
Performance tests involving one million requests at once, we encountered issues with shards and nodes not upscaling as needed, leading to crashes and minimal data loss.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would rate its scalability a ten.
Backend Developer
 

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
7.7
Elastic Search is reliable, especially under one terabyte, with occasional issues and challenges from frequent updates.
AWS Glue is highly stable, and I would rate its stability as nine.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.
SOC A2 at Innodata-ISOGEN
The stability of Elasticsearch was very high.
Backend Developer
When you put one keyword, everything related to that keyword in your ecosystem will showcase all the results.
Chief Information Security Officer at CDSL Ventures Limited
 

Room For Improvement

AWS Glue faces challenges with startup times, interface complexity, language limitations, cost, performance, integration, and multi-cloud compatibility.
Users criticize Elastic Search for mapping conflicts, complex setup, high costs, and desire improved AI integration and better documentation.
Migrating jobs from version 3.0 to 4.0 can present compatibility issues.
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
With AWS, I gather data from multiple sources, clean it up, normalize it, de-duplicate it, and make it presentable.
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
A more user-friendly and simpler process would help speed up the deployment process.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
From a technical point of view, there are no significant issues recalled as Elastic Search has been absolutely awesome for this use case and covers 100% of the needs.
Principal Scientific Computing Software Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
If I need to parse one million records saved into Elastic Search, it becomes a nightmare because I need to do the pagination, and it is very problematic in that regard.
Lead Engineer at Spidersilk
Observability features like search latency, indexing rate, and maybe rejected requests should be added to make the platform more reliable and accessible for everyone.
Senior System Engineer at EPAM Systems
 

Setup Cost

AWS Glue offers flexible, efficient serverless architecture but can be costly and unpredictable, especially for smaller organizations.
Elastic Search offers enterprise pricing based on nodes, with costs varying by features, support, and deployment options.
Costing depends on resource usage, and cost optimization may involve redesigning jobs for flexibility.
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
AWS charges based on runtime, which can be quite pricey.
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
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.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
On the AWS side, it is very expensive because they charge based on query basis or how much data is transferred in and out, making it very expensive.
Lead Engineer at Spidersilk
Having the hosted solution and not having to pay for essentially a DevOps person on staff to manage makes it affordable.
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
Senior Software Engineer at Agoda
 

Valuable Features

AWS Glue excels with its easy interface, scalable ETL processing, seamless AWS integration, affordability, and serverless architecture.
Elastic Search enhances data handling with advanced search features, scalability, AI integrations, and powerful visualization via Kibana.
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.
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
AWS Glue's most valuable features include its transformation capabilities, which provide data quality and shape for processing in ML or AI models.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
AWS Glue has reduced efforts by 60%, which is the main benefit.
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations.
Software Engineer at Government of India
The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch was the quick search capability, allowing us to search by any criteria needed.
Backend Developer
The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis.
Director, Software Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

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
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS Glue is 7.6%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 1.7%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Glue7.6%
Elastic Search1.7%
Other90.7%
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

SC
application security engineer at Hyperspace IT India
Efficient data integration reduces operational time and enhances metadata management
For the initial setup with AWS Glue, I find it easy to set up the data catalog and create Glue jobs using the visual editor or the visual code. Setting permission sets via IAM rules can be a bit tricky at the start, but we ensure Glue has access to AWS S3, Redshift, and other services. Once the role is configured, it runs smoothly. For advanced configurations, connecting to VPCs and setting up connections with JDBC sources takes more time compared to my cloud experience, but overall, for someone with cloud and ETL experience, the setup is manageable and well done.
reviewer2817942 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Logging and vector search have transformed observability and empowered reliable ai agents
Elastic Search is not specifically being used for certain purposes. I deploy Elastic Search database on the cloud and use cloud services so that nobody can attack. However, I do not use Elastic Search to resolve attack issues. The basic main purpose of Elastic Search, as of now, I feel it can do more in the AI area. Sometime I saw that when I am developing RAG and have to generate the embeddings, which I call metadata, sometimes it tries to fail. That durability or issue handling should be improved, but apart from that, I did not find anything as of now. As per my use case, whatever I am using seems pretty good. Apart from that, some definitely improvement will be there. One improvement is that it should be faster. Whenever I am searching any logs, it takes much time. For example, if I open my log in Notepad or a similar tool, I can search the text within a second. With Elastic Search, it takes a little bit of time, ten to fifteen seconds. That can be improved. Sometimes, engineers take time to assign when I create a ticket.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise47
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
When it comes to pricing, I think we had to pay AWS approximately 1,000 to 1,200 per month for the overall stack. I am not quite certain about how much Elastic Search costs specifically because I w...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search has many features, including Kibana and Logstash, which we regularly use. However, one downside in our product is cost, as it can be expensive when maintaining multiple shards and in...
What is your primary use case for ELK Elasticsearch?
As a developer, I use Elastic Search in developing one of my applications, basically integrating the back-end with Elastic Search. Our main use case for Elastic Search is for Logstash, which is a s...
 

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: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.