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Dremio vs Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Dremio
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (10th)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Dremio is 8.9%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.3%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics6.3%
Dremio8.9%
Other84.8%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

KamleshPant - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution offers quick data connection with an edge in computation
It's almost similar, yet it's better than Starburst in spinning up or connecting to the new source since it's on SaaS. It is a similar experience between the based application and cloud-based application. You just get the source, connect the data, get visualization, get connected, and do whatever you want. They say data reflection is one way where they do the caching and all that. Starburst also does the caching. In Starburst, you have a data product. Here, the data product comes from a reflection perspective. The y are working on a columnar memory map, columnar computation. That will have some edge in computation.
Joy Maitra - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported data pipeline development but still requires better integration and support
The best feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the notebook functionality; it provides a very good interface, and we can easily do our experiments, POCs, and check things before migration or deployment to higher environments such as from development to SIT and then production. The deployment process is also much smoother. Driving data-driven insights in my organization depends upon the preparation of the data. If your data is not good, then insights won't be good, and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics helps in preparing your data, so it is very helpful. I find Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics' native data lake support beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dremio gives you the ability to create services which do not require additional resources and sterilization."
"Overall, you can rate it as eight out of ten."
"Everyone uses Dremio in my company; some use it only for the analytics function."
"The most valuable feature of Dremio is it can sit on top of any other data storage, such as Amazon S3, Azure Data Factory, SGFS, or Hive. The memory competition is good. If you are running any kind of materialized view, you'd be running in memory."
"It's almost similar, yet it's better than Starburst in spinning up or connecting to the new source since it's on SaaS."
"Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage."
"Dremio is very easy to use for building queries."
"We primarily use Dremio to create a data framework and a data queue."
"The whole solution is interesting for us."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is the pipeline that is the ETL tool. It's very well designed and is overall very good. We usually don't use the ETL tool in Databricks, but we use the ETL tool in this solution."
"The platform has multiple valuable use cases. They include performance, compatibility, flexibility, and cost."
"The most valuable feature is performance gains."
"Fills the gap between big data and classic data warehouses."
"Overall deployment and integration is pretty fast."
"The product works well with other Azure products."
"The integrated workspace in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics where everything comes together, such as Power BI and Data Factory, is very good. Additionally, the ability to do dedicated SQL pooling is a benefit."
 

Cons

"We've faced a challenge with integrating Dremio and Databricks, specifically regarding authentication. It is not shaking hands very easily."
"There are performance issues at times due to our limited experience with Dremio, and the fact that we are running it on single nodes using a community version."
"They need to have multiple connectors. Starburst is rich in connectors, however, they are lacking Salesforce connectivity as of today."
"They have an automated tool for building SQL queries, so you don't need to know SQL. That interface works, but it could be more efficient in terms of the SQL generated from those things. It's going through some growing pains. There is so much value in tools like these for people with no SQL experience. Over time, Dermio will make these capabilities more accessible to users who aren't database people."
"Dremio doesn't support the Delta connector. Dremio writes the IT support for Delta, but the support isn't great. There is definitely room for improvement."
"They need to have multiple connectors."
"It shows errors sometimes."
"I cannot use the recursive common table expression (CTE) in Dremio because the support page says it's currently unsupported."
"Real-time integration is hard to do in Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics."
"They should automate some of the features. There are some things, such as the creation of external tables, that you have to do manually. They should be automated."
"Scaling this solution up and down is not quick and easy. This could be improved. The pricing of this solution could also be improved."
"The performance needs to improve in future releases."
"The linked services can be improved. We can create dynamic linked services to access a lot of databases but only those of the same type. For example, I can use the same linked services to access 11 SQL databases. However, if I have 11 SQL databases and five Oracle databases, I need two dynamic linked services. I cannot do it with only one linked service. The UI also needs to be improved. When I have used Azure Synapse for programming with PySpark, Scala, or .NET, for example, the UI has been unstable. If I open two notebooks for programming, one notebook will queue the session of the other."
"It's pay as you go, so you never know what your bill is going to be beforehand, and that's scary for customers. If you have someone who makes a mistake and the program's a loop that is running all night, you could receive a very expensive bill."
"I'd like to see part of the service de-coupled."
"If I'm looking for something good in the cloud, I would want it to have better standard connectors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Right now the cluster costs approximately $200,000 per month and is based on the volume of data we have."
"Dremio is less costly competitively to Snowflake or any other tool."
"The solution is subscription-based. You can also pay to use the product as you go."
"We have a licensing cost to pay."
"The cost of the licensing depends on the size of the warehouse, where the cost of storage is approximately $130 USD per terabyte."
"The solution is expensive at the enterprise level."
"I would rate the ROI a nine out of ten, where one is zero value and ten is 100% value."
"You have to be very careful with one specific service inside Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics which is called the Sequel Data Warehouse Dedicated. It is very reliable and performs well, but it's expensive. You need to define the tier well because you can choose between several tiers and you have to define which suits your needs and not overperform the tier because it's quite expensive."
"When we are not using this solution we can simply shut it down saving us costs, which is a nice advantage."
"It just depends on how big your instance is. It could be anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 per year depending on how big your instance is. You pay based on how big you make your database. Essentially, they charge you per hour of usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dremio?
Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dremio?
The licensing is very expensive. We need a license to scale as we are currently using the community version.
What needs improvement with Dremio?
They need to have multiple connectors. Starburst is rich in connectors, however, they are lacking Salesforce connectivity as of today. They don't have Salesforce connectivity. However, Starburst do...
How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
I find the pricing of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics reasonable; compared to AWS Glue or Databricks, it is reasonable.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UBS, TransUnion, Quantium, Daimler, OVH
Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Dremio vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.