Databricks vs H2O.ai comparison

Databricks and H2O.ai are both solutions in the Data Science Platforms category. Databricks is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while H2O.ai is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0. Databricks holds a 15.3% mindshare in Data Science Platforms, compared to H2O.ai’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Databricks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of H2O.ai users who would recommend it.

Databricks

Read 91 Databricks reviews

23,965 Views
10,784 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

H2O.ai

Read 10 H2O.ai reviews

1,186 Views
1,115 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Databricks

H2O.ai

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Databricks and H2O.ai are competing platforms in data analytics and machine learning. Databricks has an edge in scalability and integration, making it suitable for handling vast amounts of data, while H2O.ai excels with specialized AI capabilities, appealing to users needing comprehensive machine learning functions.

Features: Databricks offers superior integration with Apache Spark and cloud services, robust data processing capabilities, and a collaborative environment. It also supports seamless use of multiple programming languages and provides a user-friendly notebook interface. H2O.ai delivers strong machine learning capabilities, including AutoML for automating model training, a centralized AI platform to streamline development, and support for Jupyter Notebooks to enhance collaborative efforts.

Room for Improvement: Databricks could enhance its deep learning support and simplify certain advanced machine learning tasks. An increase in available customer support channels would also be beneficial. H2O.ai may improve its scalability and ease of integration with external systems. Offering a wider range of built-in algorithms could attract users looking for more out-of-the-box solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Databricks provides cloud-native deployment, ensuring quick setup and scalability with strong technical support and training resources. H2O.ai offers flexible deployment options, including both cloud and on-premise solutions, along with comprehensive support focused on deep learning applications and AI-specific guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Databricks offers flexible pricing models that can align well with its scalable infrastructure, often yielding favorable ROI for large-scale data operations. H2O.ai tends to have a higher initial cost, but its advanced AI features can lead to substantial returns, especially for applications that benefit from specialized machine learning.

To learn more, read our detailed Databricks vs. H2O.ai Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. H2O.ai

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

Databricks

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (8th), Streaming Analytics (1st)

H2O.ai

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

16th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Model Monitoring (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 15.3%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of H2O.ai is 1.8%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Science Platforms

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7

Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow

Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

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Abhay Vyas

Technical Architect Data Engineering at Cognida.ai

Advanced model selection and time efficiency meet needs but documentation and fusion model support are needed

Even though H2O.ai provides the best model, there could be improvements in certain areas. For instance, when you want to work with fusion models, H2O.ai doesn't provide that kind of information. Currently, it provides individual models as outcomes. If it could offer combinations of models, such as suggesting using XGBoost along with SVM for wonderful results, that fusion model concept would be a good option for developers. I hope the fusion model concept will be implemented soon in H2O.ai. Regarding documentation, I faced challenges as I didn't see much information from a documentation perspective. When I was trying to learn how to train and test H2O.ai, there was limited documentation available. If they could improve in that area, it would be really beneficial.

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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

"The solution offers a free community version."

"Databricks is a scalable solution. It is the largest advantage of the solution."

"When we have a huge volume of data that we want to process with speed, velocity, and volume, we go through Databricks."

"The simplicity of development is the most valuable feature."

"The most valuable feature is the Spark cluster which is very fast for heavy loads, big data processing and Pi Spark."

"The setup was straightforward."

"Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable."

"The solution is easy to use and has a quick start-up time due to being on the cloud."

More Databricks pros

"Fast training, memory-efficient DataFrame manipulation, well-documented, easy-to-use algorithms, ability to integrate with enterprise Java apps (through POJO/MOJO) are the main reasons why we switched from Spark to H2O."

"It is helpful, intuitive, and easy to use. The learning curve is not too steep."

"The most valuable feature of H2O.ai is that it is plug-and-play."

"AutoML helps in hands-free initial evaluations of efficiency/accuracy of ML algorithms."

"The most valuable features are the machine learning tools, the support for Jupyter Notebooks, and the collaboration that allows you to share it across people."

"H2O.ai provides better flexibility where I could examine more models and obtain results, and based on these results, I could make the next set of decisions."

"The ease of use in connecting to our cluster machines."

"One of the most interesting features of the product is their driverless component. The driverless component allows you to test several different algorithms along with navigating you through choosing the best algorithm."

More H2O.ai pros

Cons

"Can be improved by including drag-and-drop features."

"There should be better integration with other platforms."

"In the next release, I would like to see more optimization features."

"Support for Microsoft technology and the compatibility with the .NET framework is somewhat missing."

"I have had some issues with some of the Spark clusters running on Databricks, where the Spark runtime and clusters go up and down, which is an area for improvement."

"I would like to see the integration between Databricks and MLflow improved. It is quite hard to train multiple models in parallel in the distributed fashions. You hit rate limits on the clients very fast."

"The ability to customize our own pipelines would enhance the product, similar to what's possible using ML files in Microsoft Azure DevOps."

"There would also be benefits if more options were available for workers, or the clusters of the two points."

More Databricks cons

"Referring to bullet-3 as well, H2O DataFrame manipulation capabilities are too primitive."

"The interpretability module has room for improvement. Also, it needs to improve its ability to integrate with other systems, like SageMaker, and the overall integration capability."

"It lacks the data manipulation capabilities of R and Pandas DataFrames. We would kill for dplyr offloading H2O."

"The model management features could be improved."

"I would like to see more features related to deployment."

"H2O.ai can improve in areas like multimodal support and prompt engineering."

"It needs a drag and drop GUI like KNIME, for easy access to and visibility of workflows."

"One improvement I would like to see in H2O.ai is regarding the integration capabilities with different data sources, as I've seen platforms like DataIQ and DataBricks offer great integration with various data sources."

More H2O.ai cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."

"Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five."

"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"The licensing costs of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible."

"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."

"The solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."

"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."

"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."

More Databricks pricing and cost advice

"We have seen significant ROI where we were able to use the product in certain key projects and could automate a lot of processes. We were even able to reduce staff."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?

Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...

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How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?

We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...

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Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?

Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...

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What needs improvement with H2O.ai?

One improvement I would like to see in H2O.ai is regarding the integration capabilities with different data sources, as I've seen platforms like DataIQ and DataBricks offer great integration with v...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for H2O.ai?

Normally, I use H2O.ai for my machine learning tasks, and to give an example, some of the models that I've created using H2O.ai are taxi demand forecasting and a scoring model for leads. Most of my...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering H2O.ai?

I would rate the technical support a nine. For organizations considering H2O.ai, my recommendations include appreciating it as a great and flexible tool for machine learning tasks without incurring...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Databricks

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Informatica PowerCenter vs Databricks

Compared 7% of the time

Dremio vs Databricks

Compared 6% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Databricks

Compared 5% of the time

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Dataiku vs H2O.ai

Compared 24% of the time

Amazon SageMaker vs H2O.ai

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio vs H2O.ai

Compared 15% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs H2O.ai

Compared 13% of the time

Altair RapidMiner vs H2O.ai

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Databricks

August 2025

Download Databricks product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Science Platforms

August 2025

Download H2O.ai product report

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash

No data available

Overview

Databricks is utilized for advanced analytics, big data processing, machine learning models, ETL operations, data engineering, streaming analytics, and integrating multiple data sources.

Organizations leverage Databricks for predictive analysis, data pipelines, data science, and unifying data architectures. It is also used for consulting projects, financial reporting, and creating APIs. Industries like insurance, retail, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals use Databricks for data management and analytics due to its user-friendly interface, built-in machine learning libraries, support for multiple programming languages, scalability, and fast processing.

What are the key features of Databricks?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies operations and usability.
Built-in machine learning libraries: Facilitates machine learning tasks.
Support for multiple programming languages: Enhances flexibility.
Scalability: Efficiently handles growing data needs.
Fast processing: Improves performance and speed.
Automated optimization: Reduces manual efforts.
Data visualization: Provides insightful visuals.
Collaborative features: Enhances teamwork.
Delta Lake performance: Boosts data management.
Seamless cluster management: Simplifies system operations.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for in Databricks reviews?

Efficiency in handling large datasets: Ensures smooth processing.
Interactive workspace environment: Improves user collaboration.
Integration with platforms: Provides connectivity benefits.
Performance optimization: Enhances overall system performance.
Support for data governance and security: Ensures data integrity and protection.

Databricks is implemented in insurance for risk analysis and claims processing; in retail for customer analytics and inventory management; in manufacturing for predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization; and in pharmaceuticals for drug discovery and patient data analysis. Users value its scalability, machine learning support, collaboration tools, and Delta Lake performance but seek improvements in visualization, pricing, and integration with BI tools.

Databricks

H2O is a fully open source, distributed in-memory machine learning platform with linear scalability. H2O’s supports the most widely used statistical & machine learning algorithms including gradient boosted machines, generalized linear models, deep learning and more. H2O also has an industry leading AutoML functionality that automatically runs through all the algorithms and their hyperparameters to produce a leaderboard of the best models. The H2O platform is used by over 14,000 organizations globally and is extremely popular in both the R & Python communities.

H2O.ai

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware

poder.io, Stanley Black & Decker, G5, PWC, Comcast, Cisco

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. H2O.ai

July 2025

Free Report: Databricks vs. H2O.ai

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