Starburst Galaxy Reviews

Name: Starburst Galaxy
Brand: Starburst
Rating: 4.9 (7 reviews)

4.9 out of 5

7 reviews
100% willing to recommend

What is Starburst Galaxy?

Starburst Galaxy offers advanced analytics solutions tailored for big data environments. It is renowned for its scalability and flexibility, enabling data-driven decisions.

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Starburst Galaxy is the #13 ranked solution in top Data Science Platforms and #17 ranked solution in Streaming Analytics tools. PeerSpot users give Starburst Galaxy an average rating of 9.8 out of 10. Starburst Galaxy is most commonly compared to Databricks: Starburst Galaxy vs Databricks. Starburst Galaxy is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 70% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 32% of all views.

Buyer's Guide

Data Science Platforms

August 2025

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Featured Starburst Galaxy reviews

Stephen-Howard

Sr Director, Technology at Spreetail

The biggest win has been the ability to combine data from multiple sources and deliver it to the business at record speed. This capability has allowed us to query directly through Starburst Galaxy, enabling teams to access integrated data that would otherwise be hard to pull together. This has reduced both our ETL processing time and storage costs. We are answering questions that would have been hard, if not impossible, to answer previously because the data came from disparate, disconnected sources.

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reviewer2750097

VP, Business Intelligence at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees

I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs. I also want support for more connectors such as Kinesis and Firehose, support for more file types such as Avro and JSON, and object storage message queue integration for object storage integrations. A single view of query execution and optimization details, rather than needing to toggle between the Galaxy and Trino UI, would be helpful. Additionally, enhanced control over account and environment variables that would be available in the Enterprise edition would be beneficial.

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reviewer2748021

Head of Engineering at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

We have experienced several improvements across our organization. Our data ingestion processes previously involved copying data from S3 to Snowflake, which was fairly costly and required constant vigilance to purge old data so that our source tables would not bloat. Now we are able to move ingestion staging data to Iceberg tables, resulting in a much better experience in terms of both compute and storage costs as well as maintenance. Data transformation has also become more efficient. Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG. This improvement is largely due to how efficiently Trino scans relevant data without requiring any additional setup, such as defining partitions in Snowflake. In terms of cost effectiveness, we are already forecasting a 25% reduction in cloud data provider spending, even while continuing to use both Snowflake and Starburst. This is because we are able to shift a significant amount of compute to Galaxy, and the cost difference compared to our previous approach of running jobs exclusively on Snowflake is substantial.

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Starburst Galaxy mindshare

Product category:

As of August 2025, the mindshare of Starburst Galaxy in the Data Science Platforms category stands at 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Science Platforms

Key learnings from peers

Last updated Aug 17, 2025

Valuable Features

Starburst Galaxy's most valuable features include query federation, cluster management, and performance enhancements. Users highlight the ability to handle large jobs with right-sized clusters and support diverse data sources through a consistent interface. Cross-catalog querying, AWS Glue compatibility, and streamlined data connections boost user experience. Flexibility in connecting warehouses, compute-focused architecture, Iceberg support, autoscaling, and metadata management help reduce costs, optimize workload management, and facilitate integration with platforms like Kafka, S3 Iceberg, Snowflake, and Redshift.

"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."

Room for Improvement

Users desire improvements in Starburst Galaxy's cluster startup time, wishing for faster spin-ups and enhanced control over cluster configuration. There is interest in better Tableau and dbt integration, with more advanced connectors and documentation. They express a need for improved monitoring interfaces, alerting integrations, and support for more connectors like Kinesis and Firehose. Additionally, there is a call for greater observability, enhanced impersonation functionality for access control, and a Terraform provider for infrastructure-as-code workflows.

"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."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."

Pricing

Enterprise users find Starburst Galaxy's pricing competitive and transparent, with costs mainly based on cluster uptime. Users emphasize the importance of autoscaling to manage expenses effectively. While setup costs are straightforward and opportunities exist for discounts, potential buyers should consider S3 and transfer costs. Commitment-based pricing may offer better rates for steady workloads. Users value the platform's flexibility and cross-database capabilities, advising a focus on total cost of ownership and tracking usage metrics to optimize spending.

Popular Use Cases

Starburst Galaxy is utilized for connecting to various data sources like Amazon S3, RDS, and SQL Server for querying and analysis. This platform supports data integration, ad-hoc analysis, ETL, machine learning, dashboard serving, and cross-database querying. It enables access to large data sets without expensive cloud warehousing, providing features like scheduling, data cataloging, and access management, and ensuring high performance with seamless AWS integration for data engineers and analysts.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

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Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

32%

Computer Software Company

15%

University

Government

Construction Company

Retailer

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Real Estate/Law Firm

Wholesaler/Distributor

Media Company

Pharma/Biotech Company

Non Profit

Consumer Goods Company

Insurance Company

Marketing Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Recruiting/Hr Firm

Transportation Company

Leisure / Travel Company

Compare Starburst Galaxy with alternative products

Learn more about Starburst Galaxy

Starburst Galaxy provides an efficient platform for conducting complex data analysis across multiple datasets. Its architecture facilitates seamless integration with existing data infrastructure, allowing organizations to harness the value of their data efficiently. Users appreciate its ability to perform intricate queries without the need for extensive data movement, fostering a more agile approach to data management and analysis.

What features make Starburst Galaxy unique?

Advanced Query Engine: Optimizes data processing to handle complex analytics efficiently.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing data needs without compromising performance.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with existing data systems for streamlined operations.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces storage and compute costs by optimizing queries and minimizing data movement.
Improved Decision-Making: Empowers users with quick access to critical insights for strategic planning.
Enhanced Performance: Delivers faster query responses, boosting productivity and time-to-value.

Starburst Galaxy is instrumental in industries such as finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, where large-scale data analysis is crucial. Organizations in these fields implement its features to accelerate data processing and gain a competitive advantage, turning vast amounts of information into actionable insights that drive industry-specific innovations.