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Cloudera Data Platform vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

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
4.8
Organizations see varied ROI from Cloudera Data Platform, with benefits in efficiency and costs, but experiences and expectations differ.
Sentiment score
5.5
Measuring ROI from Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is complex due to diverse applications, pricing, and evaluation difficulties.
There are licensing costs that have been saved when we moved some of the data platforms, decommissioned them, and moved on to this platform.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In terms of return on investment, I see great changes in operational effectiveness measured by RTO when comparing on-premises solutions with cloud solutions.
Cloud Data Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
A specific example of the positive impact of Cloudera Data Platform is the clearly saved time and improved performance, which is the main result of it.
Data Platform Specialist at Lutech
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
Cloudera Data Platform's customer service is praised for responsiveness but experiences vary; community resources aid those without paid service.
Sentiment score
6.5
Cloudera's Hadoop support receives mixed reviews, with users praising responsiveness while noting concerns on quality and accessibility.
I would rate the customer support of Cloudera Data Platform ten out of ten.
Principal Consultant Data Analytics at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have communicated with technical support, and they are responsive and helpful.
Data Architect at ubl
Cloudera support is timely and responsive, adhering to the SLAs they provide.
Cloud Data Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The technical support is quite good and better than IBM.
Manager, Bussines Development & Co Owner at Troia d.o.o.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
Cloudera Data Platform is praised for its scalability and seamless cloud integration, though some face challenges during upgrades or on-premises.
Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is highly scalable and flexible, suitable for large deployments but can be costly to expand.
CDP allows for easy, mostly automated scalability where I can schedule job workflows, fine-tune system resource metrics, and add nodes with just a click.
Cloud Data Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
They have the cloud burst feature available where if the on-premises capacity is not sufficient at a point in time, you can run that Spark job on the cloud itself.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The ability to scale processing capacity on demand for batch jobs without impacting other workloads, and support for a growing number of concurrent users and teams accessing the platform simultaneously are significant advantages.
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Cloudera Data Platform offers reliable performance with minor issues, requiring careful configuration, especially in complex environments to prevent downtime.
Sentiment score
7.3
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop has mixed stability reviews, with hardware issues noted, but support and workarounds are available.
Sometimes the end user is not experienced or does not have all the expertise related to Cloudera specifically, making it very difficult to manage properly
Data architect at SentientAI, Karachi
Sometimes a node goes down, but it automatically returns to a healthy state.
Cloud Data Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloudera Data Platform is pretty stable in my experience; there are not any downtime or reliability issues.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We faced challenges but overcame those challenges successfully.
Head of Advaced Analytics & Intelligence; AGM at Alinma Bank
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudera Data Platform needs usability, stability, and security improvements, enhanced AI/ML features, and better multi-tenancy and cloud integration.
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop struggles with stability and integration, needing better performance, security, documentation, and modern deployment solutions.
We aim to address these issues with a Kubernetes-based platform that will simplify the task of upgrading services.
Senior Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloudera Data Platform should include additional capabilities and features similar to those offered by other data management solutions like Azure and Databricks.
Data Architect at ubl
Cloudera Data Platform can be improved by addressing the feasibility of using it in the cloud; there are some complexities around the components used in cloud by Cloudera Data Platform that are not really convenient.
ML Engineer - Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integrating with Active Directory, managing security, and configuration are the main concerns.
Manager, Bussines Development & Co Owner at Troia d.o.o.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find Cloudera cost-effective versus Oracle, though pricing complexity varies based on deployment size and negotiations.
Cloudera's Hadoop distribution is costly, aimed at large enterprises, lacking a community version, with per-node licensing.
Initially, CDH had a straightforward pricing model based on nodes, but CDP includes factors like processors, cores, terabytes, and drives, making it difficult to calculate costs.
Senior Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
We find Cloudera Data Platform to be cost-effective.
Cloud Data Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
So far, I would say that it is competitive pricing that we have received.
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.
Manager, Bussines Development & Co Owner at Troia d.o.o.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudera Data Platform offers scalability, user-friendly interface, integration, cost-effective storage, security, and simplifies administration for hybrid environments.
Cloudera for Hadoop offers easy installation, robust security, tool integration, scalability, and supports on-premises and cloud environments.
By using the Hadoop File System for distributed storage, we have 1.5 petabytes of physical storage with 500 terabytes of effective storage due to a replication factor of three.
Senior Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The Ranger integration makes it more flexible and reliable for me by allowing control over data access, specifying who can access at what level, such as table level, masking, or data layer level.
Cloud Data Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
What stands out the most in Cloudera Manager are SDX, which provide centralized control for governance, security, and data lineage across multiple sources.
Data Platform Specialist at Lutech
This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise.
Manager, Bussines Development & Co Owner at Troia d.o.o.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudera Data Platform
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) (8th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (4th), AI Data Analysis (12th)
Cloudera Distribution for H...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (2nd), NoSQL Databases (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloudera Data Platform and Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cloudera Data Platform is designed for Data Management Platforms (DMP) and holds a mindshare of 7.6%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop, on the other hand, focuses on Hadoop, holds 15.1% mindshare, down 27.9% since last year.
Data Management Platforms (DMP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudera Data Platform7.6%
Palantir Foundry15.6%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)10.8%
Other66.0%
Data Management Platforms (DMP)
Hadoop Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop15.1%
HPE Data Fabric14.9%
Apache Spark13.9%
Other56.1%
Hadoop
 

Featured Reviews

T Sarwar - PeerSpot reviewer
Data architect at SentientAI, Karachi
Has enabled efficient big data processing and querying but remains complex to manage and configure
Cloudera Data Platform should use fewer tools and remove the complexity between them. It should make it easier for the end user to change the configuration and understand it better. The UI tool for jobs in Cloudera Data Platform can be improved to provide a proper image of ETL jobs and detailed consolidated graphs to monitor Spark-based Hue jobs.
Rok Dolinsek - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Bussines Development & Co Owner at Troia d.o.o.
Enables on-premise implementation with powerful data processing capabilities
This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise. Cloudera provides a hybrid solution that combines compute on cloud or on-premises. It includes all machine learning algorithms in the Spark machine learning library. All functionalities needed for a big data platform and ETL are on the platform, eliminating the need for other tools. It is scalable, ready for vertical scaling, and very powerful, offering numerous functionalities and configurations for generative AI.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Transportation Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hortonworks Data Platform?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is very good.
What needs improvement with Hortonworks Data Platform?
Areas for improvement with Cloudera Data Platform could be the initial learning curve that can be a step for teams new to big data economy systems. Platform setup and configuration require careful ...
What is your primary use case for Hortonworks Data Platform?
Cloudera Data Platform on AWS was adopted as the core enterprise data platform, covering the full data lifecycle from ingestion to analytics and advanced use cases. Cloudera Data Platform was used ...
What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.
What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
If they could support modifying the data more easily than the current implementation, it would be beneficial.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC
Find out what your peers are saying about Palantir, Informatica, Denodo and others in Data Management Platforms (DMP). Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.