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Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Spark SQL comparison

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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

Cloudera Distribution for H...
Ranking in Hadoop
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (9th)
Spark SQL
Ranking in Hadoop
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 14.4%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spark SQL is 5.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hadoop Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop14.4%
Spark SQL5.3%
Other80.3%
Hadoop
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Kemal Duman - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
Data pipelines have run faster and support flexible batch and streaming transformations
We do not have any performance problems, but we do have some resource problems. Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink. Resource management in Spark SQL should be better. It consumes more resources, which is normal. The main reason we switched from Spark is memory and CPU consumption. The major reason is the resource problem because the number of streaming jobs has been increasing in our company. That is why we considered resource management as a priority. Because of the resource consumption, I would say the development of Spark SQL is better. For development purposes, it is a top product and not difficult to work with, but resources are the major problem. We changed to Flink regardless of development time. Development time is less in Spark compared with Flink.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudera is a very manageable solution with good support."
"The product provides better data processing features than other tools."
"We used it to build an enterprise data hub."
"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop provides numerous features and capabilities combined into one platform, offers power processing, supports different file systems and query engines, and provides parallel processing for handling many requests."
"Cloudera is one of the best solutions for on-prem."
"The data science aspect of the solution is valuable."
"I don't see any performance issues."
"Implement the free version as it provides enough services."
"We use it to gather all the transaction data."
"Data validation and ease of use are the most valuable features."
"Certain data sets that are very large are very difficult to process with Pandas and Python libraries. Spark SQL has helped us a lot with that."
"Spark SQL's efficiency in managing distributed data and its simplicity in expressing complex operations make it an essential part of our data pipeline."
"It is a stable solution."
"I find the Thrift connection valuable."
"Overall the solution is excellent."
"The speed of getting data."
 

Cons

"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is not always completely stable in some cases, which can be a concern for big data solutions."
"I would like to see an improvement in how the solution helps me to handle the whole cluster."
"The price of this solution could be lowered."
"Apache Kudu needs improvement. It's a real-time updatable database."
"The Cloudera training has deteriorated significantly."
"It could be faster and more user-friendly."
"The one thing that we struggled with predominately was support. Because it was relatively new, support was always a big issue and I think it's still a bit of an ongoing concern with the team currently managing it."
"The procedure for operations could be simplified."
"It takes a bit of time to get used to using this solution versus Pandas as it has a steep learning curve."
"It would be beneficial for aggregate functions to include a code block or toolbox that explains its calculations or supported conditional statements."
"This solution could be improved by adding monitoring and integration for the EMR."
"The solution needs to include graphing capabilities. Including financial charts would help improve everything overall."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"I've experienced some incompatibilities when using the Delta Lake format."
"In the next release, maybe the visualization of some command-line features could be added."
"SparkUI could have more advanced versions of the performance and the queries and all."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is not expensive."
"The solution is fairly expensive."
"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."
"The product’s price depends from project to project."
"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."
"The tool is expensive...For the SMB market or customers whose environments are not that complex and do not have multiple systems running, Cloudera might not be a good option."
"The pricing must be improved."
"Cloudera requires a license to use."
"We use the open-source version, so we do not have direct support from Apache."
"There is no license or subscription for this solution."
"The on-premise solution is quite expensive in terms of hardware, setting up the cluster, memory, hardware and resources. It depends on the use case, but in our case with a shared cluster which is quite large, it is quite expensive."
"The solution is open-sourced and free."
"The solution is bundled with Palantir Foundry at no extra charge."
"We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
University
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your primary use case for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
We use Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop for many use cases including analytics, storing huge data sets, and various data processing tasks.
What needs improvement with Spark SQL?
We do not have any performance problems, but we do have some resource problems. Spark SQL consumes so many resources that we migrated our streaming job from Spark to Apache Flink. Resource manageme...
What is your primary use case for Spark SQL?
Spark SQL has been in our stack for less than one year, though some of our colleagues are using it. It is a useful product for transformation jobs. We generally use Spark SQL for batch processing. ...
What advice do you have for others considering Spark SQL?
Regarding the Catalyst query optimizer, I think we are using it. We were using it in the past, but I am not certain if we use it now. We used it a long time ago. I rate my experience with Spark SQL...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. Spark SQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.