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Databricks vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

 

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

Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
8th
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
9th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 8.2%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks8.2%
Starburst Galaxy1.4%
Other90.4%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
NK
Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies
Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery
Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main features of the solution are efficiency."
"Databricks provides a consistent interface for data engineers to work with data in a consistent language on a single integrated platform for ingesting, processing, and serving data to the end user."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use SQL directly with Databricks."
"It can send out large data amounts."
"Databricks' Lakehouse architecture has been most useful for us, and the data governance has been absolutely efficient in between other kinds of solutions."
"The ability to stream data and the windowing feature are valuable."
"It's easy to increase performance as required."
"The most valuable feature of Databricks is the notebook, data factory, and ease of use."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to rethink the strategy for data and architect data differently; instead of having multiple data marts and siloed data marts, we have a unified vision, and that is how it is changing."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."
"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
 

Cons

"The integration features could be more interesting, more involved."
"The API deployment and model deployment are not easy on the Databricks side."
"I would like to see more documentation in terms of how an end-user could use it, and users like me can easily try it and implement use cases."
"The interface of Databricks could be easier to use when compared to other solutions. It is not easy for non-data scientists."
"From a purely technical perspective, I would rate Databricks an eight out of ten. However, there is a failure in terms of user adoption."
"I think the automatic categorization of variables needs to be improved; the current functionality is not always efficiently identifying the features of the data that is collected."
"Support for Microsoft technology and the compatibility with the .NET framework is somewhat missing."
"This solution only supports queries in SQL and Python, which is a bit limiting."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."
"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is based on a licensing model."
"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."
"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"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."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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 ...
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
One way Starburst Galaxy can be improved is through AI enablement. I have not seen how the user interface is going to function or how users can interact with the data products on Starburst Galaxy u...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is to use it as a data federation tool, collect data from various data sources, and have a unified view of the data. A quick specific example of how I use Star...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.