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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 (11th)
Spark SQL
Ranking in Hadoop
4th
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 November 2026, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 14.6%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spark SQL is 5.3%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hadoop Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop14.6%
Spark SQL5.3%
Other80.1%
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

"The pricing is very competitive, it's not bad."
"The solution is stable."
"We switched because Cloudera just works."
"Implementing a Hadoop cluster has become relatively straight-forward using CDH."
"The scalability of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is excellent."
"The data science aspect of the solution is valuable."
"We also really like the Cloudera community. You can have any question and will have your answer within a few hours."
"The most valuable feature is Kubernetes."
"Spark SQL's efficiency in managing distributed data and its simplicity in expressing complex operations make it an essential part of our data pipeline."
"Overall the solution is excellent."
"Spark SQL gives us a handful of methods to design queries based on its own syntax and also incorporates the regular SQL syntax within tasks."
"We use it to gather all the transaction data."
"This solution is useful to leverage within a distributed ecosystem."
"This solution is a much more scalable and adventurous solution."
"It is a stable solution."
"One of Spark SQL's most beautiful features is running parallel queries to go through enormous data."
 

Cons

"The stability is problematic. We did encounter quite a lot of issues with the cluster going down quite frequently."
"While the deployed product is generally functional, there are instances where it presents difficulties."
"The Cloudera training is terrible."
"Cloudera's support is extremely bad and cannot be relied on."
"On same ground I didn't see much training materials from Cloudera."
"I had a bad experience connecting the Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cluster to my other resources in the company, like the active directory or firewall."
"The security of this solution could be improved. There should also be a way to basically have a blockchain enabled storage with the HDFS."
"It could be faster and more user-friendly."
"SparkUI could have more advanced versions of the performance and the queries and all."
"Being a new user, I am not able to find out how to partition it correctly."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"This solution could be improved by adding monitoring and integration for the EMR."
"Anything to improve the GUI would be helpful."
"In terms of improvement, the only thing that could be enhanced is the stability aspect of Spark SQL."
"There are many inconsistencies in syntax for the different querying tasks like selecting columns and joining between two tables so I'd like to see a more consistent syntax."
"I've experienced some incompatibilities when using the Delta Lake format."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is not expensive."
"I haven't bought a license for this solution. I'm only using the Apache license version."
"Cloudera requires a license to use."
"The product’s price depends from project to project."
"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."
"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."
"The solution is fairly expensive."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"The solution is bundled with Palantir Foundry at no extra charge."
"The solution is open-sourced and free."
"We use the open-source version, so we do not have direct support from Apache."
"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."
"There is no license or subscription for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
University
9%
 

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: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.