# Apache Spark Software Pricing, Alternatives & More 2026 | Capterra > With the help of Capterra, learn about Apache Spark Software - reviews, pricing plans, popular comparisons to other Data Analysis products and more. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/233703/Apache-Spark --- # Apache Spark Software Review 2026: Features, Integrations, Pros & Cons Last updated on March 13, 2026 Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. Independent research methodology Capterra’s researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology. 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[Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-ensure-transparency/) [Description](#description)[Use cases](#use-cases)[Alternatives](#alternatives)[Pricing](#pricing)[Support](#support)[Reviews](#reviews) Apache Spark ## What is Apache Spark? Open-source unified analytics engine that helps businesses perform large-scale data processing. ## What is Apache Spark used for? [Data Analysis](https://www.capterra.com/data-analysis-software/) Top alternative Featured Overall rating Based on 16 user reviews Reviews sentiment Positive \- Neutral \- Negative \- Contact vendor for pricing Free trial not available Capterra Shortlist charts the highest-rated and most popular products... Our "Best of" badge program showcases products with the highest ratings... Our "Best of" badge program showcases products with the highest ratings... Do you work for Apache Spark?[Manage this product listing](https://digitalmarkets.gartner.com/get-listed/claim-bx?url=http://www.apache.org&name=Apache Spark) ## Compare with a popular alternative Capterra selects software alternatives based on relevant features, verified user reviews and user interactions. Placement may be influenced by client status. ### Apache Spark 4.6 (16) VS. [4.4 (360)](https://www.capterra.com/p/129749/Zoho-Analytics/reviews/) Starting Price Contact vendor Starting Price $30 Flat Rate, Per Month Free Trial Free Version Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version Ease Of Use 4.2 (16) Ease Of Use 4.2 (1,857) Value For Money 4.6 (14) Value For Money 4.3 (1,263) Customer Service 4.3 (14) Customer Service 4.1 (1,197) ## Apache Spark alternatives Highest Rated [4.7 (84)](https://www.capterra.com/p/10012559/EngineRoom/reviews/) Starting price $495.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 96% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [4.5 (388)](https://www.capterra.com/p/109731/Minitab-Statistical-Software/reviews/) Starting price $1851.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 93% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [4.3 (330)](https://www.capterra.com/p/119119/Domo/reviews/) Starting price Contact vendor for pricing Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 85% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [Microsoft Power BI](https://www.capterra.com/p/176586/Power-BI/) [4.6 (1,878)](https://www.capterra.com/p/176586/Power-BI/reviews/) Starting price $10.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 96% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [Learn More](https://www.capterra.com/p/176586/Power-BI/) [View all alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/233703/Apache-Spark/alternatives/) ## Pricing Value for money 4.6 (14) ### Starting price Contact vendor for pricing Free trial not available Value for money 4.6 (14) 4.6 Based on 14 reviews Connect with a Capterra advisor for a free 15-minute consultation Get a personalized software list aligned to your business needs with guidance from our expert advisors. Our team has helped 1 million+ businesses like yours find options that fit their needs. ## Support, customer service and training options Customer Service 4.3 (14) Support - Email/Help Desk - FAQs/Forum - Knowledge Base - Phone Support - 24/7 (Live rep) - Chat Training - In Person - Live Online - Webinars - Documentation - Videos Deployment - Web - Android - iPhone/iPad Typical users - Freelancers - Small businesses - Mid size businesses - Enterprises Customer Service 4.3 (14) 4.3 Based on 14 reviews ## User reviews Overall rating 4.6 Based on 16 reviews Filter by rating 5(11) 4(3) 3(2) 2(0) 1(0) Mentioned topic Sorted by most recent VP Vidya P. Cloud engineer Information Technology and Services ### "Spark does sparkle with data processing" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 9/10 April 27, 2025 Overall I have been working with spark for 8 yrs now and it's most widely used framework for analytics and data pipelines which needs expertise to get most out of it Pros Spark is in memory computation and very capable of large data processing and it's integration capabilities with different data sources make it special Cons Apache spark needs more memory which can be cost consuming and it needs good understanding of framework to get most out of it Switched from [Apache Hive](https://www.capterra.com/p/170238/Apache-Hive/) Hive was not peformant and spark evolved from hive Review source Non-incentivized review: any software user can leave a review for any product listed on our site. All submitted reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. EP Elena P. Principal Management Consulting ### "Ottimizzazione spazio di archiviazione dei big data e analisi" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 October 15, 2023 Spark ci ha permesso di ottimizzare lo spazio in memoria, risolvendo il problema dell’acquisto di grandi (e costosi) spazi di archiviazione. Le sue funzioni di sicurezza e protezione dei dati, inoltre, garantiscono l’integrità di quanto salvato. Pros Adoro la velocità di elaborazione dei dati, la versatilità nell’approccio di elaborazione e l’incredibile ottimizzazione di uso della memoria che si può ottenere con Spark. Notevole l’ecosistema di integrazioni possibili mediante API. Facile da usare, così come semplice è l’integrazione e l’implementazione con i sistemi informatici dell’azienda. Ottimo il supporto del servizio clienti, ma soprattutto quello della community! Cons Con elevata complessità all’interno dei dati è difficile individuare e risolvere bug , specialmente se parliamo di elaborazioni di big data. Non è adatto a lavorare su database di piccole dimensioni. Review source Non-incentivized review: any software user can leave a review for any product listed on our site. All submitted reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AT Arun T. Business Analyst Information Technology and Services ### "For Big Data-Apache Spark" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 October 5, 2023 Pros It helps to process the large data quickly.It has good memory queue.It Process in real time. Cons Initially difficult to learn for beginners. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. Filippo C. Senior Data Scientist Marketing and Advertising ### "The ultimate tool for big data processing!" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 October 2, 2023 Apache Spark is helping me normalize and process hundred of millions of records at a time. Its machine learning library allows further processing to extract valuable insights from advertising and marketing data. As an open source software, it displays hundreds of connectors to read/write data from/to the most common cloud databases, regardless of the data cloud center provider (AWS, Microsoft, GoogleCloud) Pros Apache Spark is an open source big data engine that allows to process millions and even billions of records. It supports integration with common programming languages (R, Python, Scala, SQL) which makes it quite easy to use. It's used world wide for data science and engineering and it relies on parallel in-memory computation that boost your code performance. It really helped me in processing any kind of data I had Cons It takes time to learn how Spark works and how operations are distributed among the driver and the workers. Also error messages are not completely clear and sometimes debugging is not straightforward. Switched from [The Jupyter Notebook](https://www.capterra.com/p/234967/The-Jupyter-Notebook/) Jupyter Notebook is based on serial computation and it doesn't fit large data processing. Review source Non-incentivized review: any software user can leave a review for any product listed on our site. All submitted reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. SN Shilpa N. Pricing Lead Information Technology and Services ### "Boon of Data-Apache Spark" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 September 18, 2023 Pros It is like inbuilt of new technologies together, which works without any fail.It collects data from various sources and works on real time. Cons Need more memory. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. VD Vinoth D. Quality Analyst Information Technology and Services ### "Handle Big Data with Apache Spark" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 September 5, 2023 Pros It likes the most is Machine Learning for larger data.It handles more data very fast.Error Detection very prominent. Cons Lack of Memory.Difficult to learn.Need customer support. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AK Ashok Kumar D. Functional Analyst Information Technology and Services ### "Analyze Your Data with Apache Spark" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 September 3, 2023 Pros Excellent in processing real time data.Steam processing is good. Cons Machine learning should be improved a level better. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. Meale Y. Seller Construction ### "Data transformation" 3.0 Overall Rating 3.0 3.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 4.0 4.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 5/10 August 25, 2023 Pros Apache spark is a good software when it is a question of transforming data and analysing it. Cons The software is not perfect when i need many joins. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. SA Samuel A. Software Telecommunications ### "Apache Spark: Ignite Your Data Processing Power" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 4.0 4.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 May 18, 2023 Pros Apache Spark is a powerful, free tool that handles big data efficiently, works well with other programming languages, and offers a wide variety of libraries and techniques for high performance Cons Apache Spark struggles with small data sets, lacks automatic optimization, and could improve in providing more diverse machine learning libraries and managing memory shortage Switched from [Apache Hive](https://www.capterra.com/p/170238/Apache-Hive/) Spark offers a more robust and diverse ecosystem today compared to Hive Review source Non-incentivized review: any software user can leave a review for any product listed on our site. All submitted reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AU Anonymous User Software Engineer Computer Software ### "Powerful and Open-source" 4.0 Overall Rating 4.0 4.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 2.0 2.0 Likelihood to Recommend 8/10 March 18, 2023 Pros For me processing was so fast, I compared it with Hadoop on really big data, and it performed better. Cons One thing is that there is no automatic optimization process. And there is not much variety of machine learning libraries and algorithms as other big data frameworks. Review source Non-incentivized review: any software user can leave a review for any product listed on our site. All submitted reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. [View all Reviews](https://www.capterra.com/p/233703/Apache-Spark/reviews/) ## Top-rated software of 2026 ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox. Independent research methodology Capterra's researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/proprietary-data-research/) How Capterra verifies reviews Capterra carefully verified over 2.5 million+ reviews to bring you authentic software experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-verify-reviews/) How Capterra ensures transparency Capterra lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Capterra is free for users. Software providers pay us for sponsored profiles to receive web traffic and sales opportunities. Sponsored profiles include a link-out icon that takes users to the provider's website. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-ensure-transparency/)