AWS Glue vs. Azure Synapse Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS Glue
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
AWS Glue is a managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service designed to make it easy for customers to prepare and load data for analytics. With it, users can create and run an ETL job in the AWS Management Console. Users point AWS Glue to data stored on AWS, and AWS Glue discovers data and stores the associated metadata (e.g. table definition and schema) in the AWS Glue Data Catalog. Once cataloged, data is immediately searchable, queryable, and available for ETL.
$0.44
billed per second, 1 minute minimum
Azure Synapse Analytics
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Azure Synapse Analytics is described as the former Azure SQL Data Warehouse, evolved, and as a limitless analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives users the freedom to query data using either serverless or provisioned resources, at scale. Azure Synapse brings these two worlds together with a unified experience to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate BI and machine learning needs.
$4,700
per month 5000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Pricing
AWS GlueAzure Synapse Analytics
Editions & Modules
per DPU-Hour
$0.44
billed per second, 1 minute minimum
Tier 1
$4,700
per month 5,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 2
$9,200
per month 10,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 3
$21,360
per month 24,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 4
$50,400
per month 60,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 5
$117,000
per month 150,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Tier 6
$259,200
per month 360,000 Synapse Commit Units (SCUs)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS GlueAzure Synapse Analytics
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS GlueAzure Synapse Analytics
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AWS GlueAzure Synapse Analytics
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IBM InfoSphere Information Server
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Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
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Snowflake
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Score 8.8 out of 10
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User Ratings
AWS GlueAzure Synapse Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(8 ratings)
8.1
(9 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS GlueAzure Synapse Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
One of AWS Glue's most notable features that aid in the creation and transformation of data is its data catalog. Support, scheduling, and the automation of the data schema recognition make it superior to its competitors aside from that. It also integrates perfectly with other AWS tools. The main restriction may be integrated with systems outside of the AWS environment. It functions flawlessly with the current AWS services but not with other goods. Another potential restriction that comes to mind is that glue operates on a spark, which means the engineer needs to be conversant in the language.
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Microsoft
It's well suited for large, fastly growing, and frequently changing data warehouses (e.g., in startups). It's also suited for companies that want a single, relatively easy-to-use, centralized cloud service for all their data needs. Larger, more structured organizations could still benefit from this service by using Synapse Dedicated SQL Pools, knowing that costs will be much higher than other solutions. I think this product is not suited for smaller, simpler workloads (where an Azure SQL Database and a Data Factory could be enough) or very large scenarios, where it may be better to build custom infrastructure.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • It is extremely fast, easy, and self-intuitive. Though it is a suite of services, it requires pretty less time to get control over it.
  • As it is a managed service, one need not take care of a lot of underlying details. The identification of data schema, code generation, customization, and orchestration of the different job components allows the developers to focus on the core business problem without worrying about infrastructure issues.
  • It is a pay-as-you-go service. So, there is no need to provide any capacity in advance. So, it makes scheduling much easier.
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Microsoft
  • Create data pipelines to connect with multiple data workspace(s) and external data
  • Ability to connect with Azure Data Lake (sequentially) for data warehousing
  • Being able to manage connections and create integration runtimes (for onPrem data capture)
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • In-Stream schema registries feature people can not use this more efficiently
  • in Connections feature they can add more connectors as well
  • The crucial problem with AWS Glue is that it only works with AWS.
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Microsoft
  • It takes some time to setup a proper SQL Datawarehouse architecture. Without proper SSIS/automation scripts, this can be a very daunting task.
  • It takes a lot of foresight when designing a Data Warehouse. If not properly designed, it can be very troublesome to use and/or modify later on.
  • It takes a lot of effort to maintain. Businesses are continually changing. With that, a full time staff member or more will be required to maintain the SQL Data Warehouse.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
We give 7 rating because of usefulness in AWS world without worrying about infrastructure and services interaction, it’s pretty out of the box gives us the flexibility to interact with them and use them. we take the data source in s3 from external system and then transform it using other AWS services and putting it back for other external services to consume in S3 form.
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Microsoft
The data warehouse portion is very much like old style on-prem SQL server, so most SQL skills one has mastered carry over easily. Azure Data Factory has an easy drag and drop system which allows quick building of pipelines with minimal coding. The Spark portion is the only really complex portion, but if there's an in-house python expert, then the Spark portion is also quiet useable.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Amazon responds in good time once the ticket has been generated but needs to generate tickets frequent because very few sample codes are available, and it's not cover all the scenarios.
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Microsoft
Microsoft does its best to support Synapse. More and more articles are being added to the documentation, providing more useful information on best utilizing its features. The examples provided work well for basic knowledge, but more complex examples should be added to further assist in discovering the vast abilities that the system has.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
AWS Glue is a fully managed ETL service that automates many ETL tasks, making it easier to set AWS Glue simplifies ETL through a visual interface and automated code generation.
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Microsoft
When client is already having or using Azure then it’s wise to go with Synapse rather than using Snowflake. We got a lot of help from Microsoft consultants and Microsoft partners while implementing our EDW via Synapse and support is easily available via Microsoft resources and blogs. I don’t see that with Snowflake
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Basically, the billing is predictable, and this all about it.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It had a positive impact on the way we build our data lake.
  • It is the single source of truth for data structure (schemas/tables/views).
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Microsoft
  • We have had an improvement in our overall processing time
  • Cost was much lower than most of its competitors
  • Our reporting needs have grown and housing the data here has been great
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