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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
7th
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
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.0%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 9.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Lake Formation5.0%
Databricks9.2%
Other85.8%
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 works hand in hand with other products."
"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."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"The features and capabilities of AWS Lake Formation that I have found most valuable are that it is really convenient to see all the different data assets that were configured and understand who has and what type of service has or does not have access to those services."
"I like that Databricks is a unified platform that lets you do streaming and batch processing in the same place. You can do analytics, too. They have added something called Databricks SQL Analytics, allowing users to connect to the data lake to perform analytics. Databricks also will enable you to share your data securely. It integrates with your reporting system as well."
"The tool helps with data processing and analytics with large-scale data or big data since it is associated with managing data at a large scale."
"The solution is very simple and stable."
"The most valuable feature of Databricks is the integration of the data warehouse and data lake, and the development of the lake house. Additionally, it integrates well with Spark for processing data in production."
"Can cut across the entire ecosystem of open source technology to give an extra level of getting the transformatory process of the data."
"Databricks is a robust solution for big data processing, offering flexibility and powerful features."
"It can send out large data amounts."
"The main features of the solution are efficiency."
 

Cons

"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."
"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."
"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."
"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."
"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."
"I think AWS Lake Formation could improve by enforcing the least privilege by design, moving from ad hoc grants to role-based access controls."
"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"The initial setup is difficult."
"Instead of relying on a massive instance, the solution should offer micro partition levels. They're working on it, however, they need to implement it to help the solution run more effectively."
"So far, we're not measuring any return on investment, such as saving time, money, or resources with Databricks."
"I would like it if Databricks made it easier to set up a project."
"In the next release, I would like to see more optimization features."
"This solution only supports queries in SQL and Python, which is a bit limiting."
"In my opinion, areas of Databricks that have room for improvement involve the dashboards. Until recently, everyone used third-party systems such as Power BI to connect to Databricks for dashboards and reports, but they're now coming up with their IBI dashboard, and I think they're on the right track to improve that even further."
"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 are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"There are different versions."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"We find Databricks to be very expensive, although this improved when we found out how to shut it down at night."
"The price of Databricks is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
 

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...
 

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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.