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AWS Lake Formation vs Databricks 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 Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 3.8%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 9.7%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks9.7%
AWS Lake Formation3.8%
Other86.5%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.
SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS Lake Formation has several valuable features that enhance data management, and one particularly beneficial aspect is how it facilitates better collaboration within data teams."
"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"Every solution has its pros and cons, however, for our purposes, this solution works quite well for us."
"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"We chose Databricks because the processing power was better and it was a better fit for our use case."
"Databricks' most valuable features are the workspace and notebooks, and its integration, interface, and documentation are also good."
"Databricks is quite easy to use and requires less coding and customizations than a solution like AWS SageMaker, enabling more people to efficiently build and host their ML code while leveraging the already integrated MLflow to track and monitor all our different experiments."
"You can spin up an Azure Databricks clustered, and integrating with it is seamless."
"When we have a huge volume of data that we want to process with speed, velocity, and volume, we go through Databricks."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"Databricks makes it really easy to use a number of technologies to do data analysis. In terms of languages, we can use Scala, Python, and SQL. Databricks enables you to run very large queries, at a massive scale, within really good timeframes."
"The ability to stream data and the windowing feature are valuable."
 

Cons

"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."
"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."
"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."
"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."
"A lot of people are required to manage this solution."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio."
"I present a lot of projects in various forums and seminars and there aren't a lot of credits and trial options with Databricks. Even if we want to explore, we're not able to and that's a challenge."
"The Databricks cluster can be improved."
"Databricks is an analytics platform. It should offer more data science. It should have more features for data scientists to work with."
"I think the aspects of Databricks that should be improved are that it could be faster and that I would like to be able to run direct queries from the server."
"Databricks requires writing code in Python or SQL, so if you're a good programmer then you can use Databricks."
"I would like to see more documentation in terms of how an end-user could use it, and users like me can easily try it and implement use cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"Databricks' cost could be improved."
"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"My smallest project is around a hundred euros, and my most expensive is just under a thousand euros a week. That is based on terabytes of data processed each month."
"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Construction Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.