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 #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.0% mindshare in CDW, compared to Microsoft’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 85% 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 21 AWS Lake Formation reviews

1,416 Views
1,317 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

Read 98 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reviews

4,140 Views
2,608 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...

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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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

December 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

7th

Average Rating

8.0

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

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.2%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics	6.2%
AWS Lake Formation	5.0%
Other	88.8%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra

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.

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AnandTiwari

CTO at New Turn Technologies

Has consistently supported integration across diverse environments and streamlined deployment processes

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics could improve their pricing structure. They currently have two separate pricing tiers: full log and partial log. I suggest they implement a single price and reduce charges on logs. They could implement a cap with some free tier or price tier based on the GBs of log collected. This would help customers use Azure more effectively. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is an excellent product because it includes both SIEM and orchestration capabilities with playbooks, but the log management part is very costly. Regarding future improvements, I would appreciate more application connectors for integration, particularly for on-premise based solutions. Many customers still maintain on-premise infrastructure, so having more integration possibilities for these environments would be beneficial.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."

"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."

"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

"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."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are the interface and the agility of the on-cloud platform."

"Technical support is okay in terms of the help they provide."

"I have not used the technical support from Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, but I worked with the developers at Microsoft who were top-notch."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are the user experience because it is easy to make analyses, load different databases, and different resources. Our end users can do the analysis by themselves without IT supervising. This is a great aspect of the solution, it's better for our environment."

"The features I find most valuable in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics are comprehensive because they have combined almost five to six components into one single bundle."

"The most valuable feature is that you can suspend the computer if it is not being used, which means that you don't incur costs."

"What I actually appreciate in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is that it is easy and intuitive, providing a straightforward configuration experience for my purposes."

"They are available on the Cloud, and the platform is very intuitive."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pros

Cons

"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."

"Rather than creating an additional hundred tools, optimizing a tool to have a centralized location to do governance would be beneficial."

"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."

"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."

"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."

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

"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."

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

More AWS Lake Formation cons

"An area for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its user interface. You can use it for analytical purposes, but its platform should be a little bit more user-friendly. Another small point for improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is its stability. It's good currently, but it could still be improved. Microsoft is combining different tools and technologies into one solution, so in the future, I'm expecting to see even more improvement in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next version of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the drag-and-drop feature. If you're doing some integrations where you can write Scala or you have SPARK programming or SQL, or you're combining different programming, the process should be seamless, and you should be able to drag and drop in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. When doing reporting in the solution, you should also be able to drag and drop. There should be connectors available and a drag-and-drop feature available in the user interface of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, so you won't have to worry about how all processes would work together. You need to be able to drag and drop even from the backend, and having this feature will make the solution more user-friendly."

"Synapse Analytics' performance slows down if you don't get your distribution right because it gets queued and goes into a single node."

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

"While the solution is flexible, sometimes this works against the user."

"The platform is not flexible, and the graphical user interface needs to be improved because the interface makes it hard for the end user to use it."

"The initial setup has a bit of a learning curve."

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

"I wish the data governance feature could be incorporated without requiring an additional license."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."

"The solution could improve by having better costing information."

"It just depends on how big your instance is. It could be anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 per year depending on how big your instance is. You pay based on how big you make your database. Essentially, they charge you per hour of usage."

"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."

"Price is dependent of the use case of the customer. Customers are not likely to only use this as an individual platform/database, they are likely to bundle it with the Azure stack."

"There is a cost calculator available online that allows you to input your entire scenario, and it will get back to you with information on what the costs are going to be."

"Its price could be better. It was a school project, and I got it for free. If I try to pay through my company, it is a little bit more expensive as compared to Oracle."

"Because it's cloud the cost is a different convention and the licensing costs are not the same."

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	56

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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?

Pricing only.

See all answers

Comparisons

Snowflake vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 18% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 15% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 15% of the time

Teradata vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 4% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Snowflake vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

Teradata vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

January 2026

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

January 2026

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

December 2025

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