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AWS SageMaker: Build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale
Databricks
Unified analytics platform for data engineering and data science
As of 30 August 2026, Databricks is free to use. Databricks is a unified analytics platform that provides a collaborative environment for data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning engineers. Softwr lists it under Machine Learning. Databricks is made by Databricks Inc., launched in 2013, available on Web.
Overview
What Databricks does
Databricks is a unified analytics platform that provides a collaborative environment for data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning engineers. It combines data warehousing and AI, built on open source technologies like Apache Spark and Delta Lake.
What people use it for
- Running Spark data engineering pipelines on managed clusters
- Building a lakehouse over data in cloud object storage
- Training and serving machine learning models alongside the data
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Databricks.
- Cloud compute is billed separately by the cloud provider on top of Databricks DBU charges
- The free trial lasts 14 days
- Discounts require a Committed Use Contract, with larger commitments needed for larger discounts
- Azure Databricks pricing is set by Microsoft rather than by Databricks
- Security and compliance capabilities are sold as separate platform add ons rather than included in the base rate
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Databricks
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- DatabricksvsGoogle Vertex AI
Google Vertex AI: Unified ML platform to build, deploy, and scale AI models
- DatabricksvsAzure Machine Learning
Azure Machine Learning: Enterprise-grade machine learning service
- DatabricksvsDataRobot
DataRobot: Enterprise AI platform for automated machine learning
Pricing
What Databricks costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Community Edition
Free
- Limited cluster
- Notebook environment
- Community support
Standard
$0.07 /DBU
- Jobs compute
- SQL compute
- Standard support
Capabilities
Features
Delta Lake
Apache Spark
MLflow
Unity Catalog
Photon Engine
Collaborative Notebooks
Auto-scaling
AWS
Integration with AWS
Azure
Integration with Azure
GCP
Integration with GCP
Tableau
Integration with Tableau
Power BI
Integration with Power BI
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How is Databricks priced?
Databricks bills pay as you go with no up front cost, charging per second for the products used. Consumption is measured in Databricks Units, a normalised unit of processing power on the platform.
SourceDoes Databricks publish a per DBU price?
Not on its main pricing page. Rates vary by product and instance type, and Databricks directs buyers to individual product pricing pages and a calculator rather than listing a single figure.
SourceDoes the Databricks price include cloud costs?
No. Databricks states that if you configure it to work with your own cloud account, your cloud provider still charges you separately for the underlying resources.
SourceCan I get a discount on Databricks?
Databricks offers Committed Use Contracts, where larger usage commitments earn greater benefits, including options to use commitments flexibly across multiple clouds.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Databricks
- Company
- Databricks Inc.
- Based in
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Founders
- Ali Ghodsi, Andy Konwinski, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia, Patrick Wendell, Reynold Xin, Arsalan Tavakoli
Timeline
Databricks over time
Keep looking
Where to go from Databricks
- Databricks alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Databricks pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Databricks badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Machine Learning softwareThe full category
- Best Machine Learning softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Machine Learning software for
Compare Databricks with
- AWS SageMaker
- Google Vertex AI
- Azure Machine Learning
- DataRobot
- TensorFlow
- SAS
- Snowflake
- Apache Spark MLlib
- Alteryx
- IBM SPSS
- Palantir Foundry
- BentoML
- ClearML
- Cohere
- Dask
- Fal AI
- BigQuery ML
- BigQuery ML
Other Machine Learning software
Build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale
Free, then $0.04/hour9 researched notesMicrosoft's managed platform for training, tracking and deploying models on Azure
Free plan13 researched notesThe machine learning library inside Apache Spark, for data that will not fit on one machine
Free plan14 researched notesOpen source Python framework that packages models into deployable inference services
Free plan14 researched notesOpen-source MLOps platform for experiment tracking and orchestration
Free plan8 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Databricks, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Databricks
Databricks alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Databricks pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Databricks
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Databricks badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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