AWS Lake Formation vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.3, while Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.9. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.8% mindshare in CDW, compared to Microsoft’s 6.1% mindshare. Additionally, 72% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

AWS Lake Formation

Read 11 AWS Lake Formation reviews

1,711 Views
1,660 Comparison Views

72% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Read 93 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reviews

5,225 Views
3,501 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and AWS Lake Formation are competing in the data integration and analytics platform category. Azure Synapse Analytics seems to have an edge in terms of support and pricing, while AWS Lake Formation offers greater value through its comprehensive feature set.

Features: Azure Synapse Analytics provides integrated analytics services, seamless scalability, and a user-friendly interface for Microsoft product integration. These features make it particularly suitable for businesses utilizing other Azure services. AWS Lake Formation stands out with its robust data cataloging, advanced security capabilities, and strong interoperability within the AWS ecosystem. These strengths facilitate superior data governance and management.

Room for Improvement: Azure Synapse Analytics may lack some advanced data security features compared to AWS, potentially requiring enhancements in data cataloging for non-Microsoft environments. It might benefit from improved interoperability with non-Microsoft platforms. AWS Lake Formation could improve ease of deployment and user experience for those unfamiliar with AWS. Additionally, streamlining integration processes for non-native AWS services could increase its appeal outside the AWS environment.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Synapse Analytics offers a streamlined deployment process, particularly within the Azure ecosystem, bolstered by reliable customer support. AWS Lake Formation, while posing a more comprehensive setup due to its wide-ranging data management capabilities, provides strong backing with customer support tailored to meet enterprise-level requirements. This distinction underscores ease of use in environments where each solution excels, with Azure Synapse integrating more smoothly within Microsoft-based infrastructures.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Synapse Analytics presents competitive pricing, especially for Microsoft-centric organizations, offering efficient ROI through streamlined data processing workflows. AWS Lake Formation may require a higher initial financial commitment but promises significant ROI owing to its extensive security and robust data management features. Deciding between the two requires organizations to weigh cost against long-term value, considering their strategic priorities around data governance and security.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

July 2025

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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

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.8%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.1%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ramesh Raghavan

US South Lead, Accenture AWS Business Group at Accenture

Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better

There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.

Read full review

Renee Hoon

Data Platform Specialist at Sasol

Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs

We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

"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."

"There is no doubt that this place exceeded my expectations with its incredible ambiance, attentive service, and mouthwatering menu."

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."

"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."

"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"The product provides a seamless and adaptable approach to data processing and analytics."

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers significant visibility, which helps us understand our usage more clearly."

"The initial setup was really easy and straightforward."

"The solution operates like a typical SQL Server environment so there is no alienation in terms of technical knowledge."

"-"

"The solution can scale."

"I like the keynotes and their simplicity. Like other Microsoft products, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is simple to understand and use."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the analytics and that it can connect with Power BI."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

Cons

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."

"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."

"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."

"You need to have data experience to use the product."

"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."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"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."

"In our company, we always want to improve our data management, including how to manage structured and unstructured data."

"Non-structured data is unavailable with this product."

"The performance and data consistency need to be improved."

"There may be some challenges in terms of connecting with Virtual Networks (VNETs) to Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics."

"We encountered data processing and transformation issues while working with Apache Spark languages for the product."

"The linked services can be improved. We can create dynamic linked services to access a lot of databases but only those of the same type. For example, I can use the same linked services to access 11 SQL databases. However, if I have 11 SQL databases and five Oracle databases, I need two dynamic linked services. I cannot do it with only one linked service. The UI also needs to be improved. When I have used Azure Synapse for programming with PySpark, Scala, or .NET, for example, the UI has been unstable. If I open two notebooks for programming, one notebook will queue the session of the other."

"The need to improve a little bit in terms of user-friendliness."

"One potential area for improvement could be the availability of an on-premises data lake implementation, as the product is currently only implemented in a cloud environment."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is a moderately priced solution."

"The solution is expensive at the enterprise level."

"This is an expensive solution."

"I understand that Synapse Analytics' pricing is lower than Informatica's."

"The pricing is competitive, but only when you pay upfront. If you pay as you go, it's not as competitive. I'd give pricing a rating of seven out of ten."

"Our license is very expensive"

"It requires a less expensive version because currently, not every customer is able to buy it. If it could have a smaller setup that doesn't require so many resources, it would be helpful, and we would be able to use it in more cases. We are a small country, and most of our customers are quite small businesses."

"This is a cost-effective product."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?

It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?

The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...

See all answers

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?

I think the price of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is very expensive, but that's not only for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics—it's for the cloud in general. The cloud is not cost-effective. I...

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 29% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 20% of the time

BigQuery vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 11% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

Apache Hadoop vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

August 2025

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

August 2025

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics report

Download Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics product report

Also Known As

No data available

Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics

Overview

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an end-to-end analytics solution that successfully combines analytical services to merge big data analytics and enterprise data warehouses into a single unified platform. The solution can run intelligent distributed queries among nodes, and provides the ability to query both relational and non-relational data.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is built with these 4 components:

Synapse SQL
Spark
Synapse Pipeline
Studio

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Features

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics has many valuable key features, including:

Cloud Data Service: WIth Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can operate services (data analytics, machine learning, data warehousing, dashboarding, etc.) in a single workspace via the cloud.
Structured and unstructured data: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics supports both structured and unstructured data and allows you to manage relational and non-relational data - unlike data warehouses and lakes that tend to store them respectively.
Effective data storage: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers next-level data storage with high availability and different tiers.
Responsive data engine: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics uses Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) and is designed to handle large volumes of data and analytical workloads efficiently without any problems.
Several scripting languages: The solution provides language compatibility and supports different programming languages, such as Python, Java, Spark SQL, and Scala.
Query optimization: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics works well to facilitate limitless concurrency and performance optimization. It also simplifies workload management.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics include:

Database templates: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers industry-specific database templates that make it easy to combine and shape data.
Better business insights: With Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics you can expand discovery of insights from all your data and apply machine learning models to all your intelligent apps.
Reduce project development time: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics makes it possible to have a unified experience for developing end-to-end analytics, which reduces project development time significantly.
Eliminate data barriers: By using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, you can perform analytics on operational and business apps data without data movement.
Advanced security: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides both advanced security and privacy features to ensure data protection.
Machine Learning: Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics integrates Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services, and Power BI.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Jael S., who is an Information Architect at Systems Analysis & Design Engineering, comments on her experience using the product, saying that it is “Scalable, intuitive, facilitates compliance and keeps your data secure”. She also says "We also like governance. It looks at what the requirements are for the company to identify the best way to ensure compliance is met when you move to the cloud."

Michel T., CHTO at Timp-iT, mentions that "the features most valuable are the simplicity, how easy it is to create a dashboard from different information systems."

A Senior Teradata Consultant at a tech services company says, "Microsoft provides both the platform and the data center, so you don't have to look for a cloud vendor. It saves you from having to deal with two vendors for the same task."

Microsoft

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe,

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

July 2025

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

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