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Apache NiFi vs Apache Spark comparison

 
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025
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
Apache NiFi
Ranking in Compute Service
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (2nd), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 Mindshare comparison
As of November 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Apache NiFi is 9.3%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.4%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Spark11.4%
Apache NiFi9.3%
Other79.3%
Compute Service
 Featured Reviews
Bharghava Raghavendra Beesa - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Developer at Infosys
The tool enables effective data transformation and integration
There are some areas for improvement, particularly with record-level tasks that take a bit of time. The quality of JSON data processing could be improved, as JSON workloads require manual conversions without a specific process. Enhancing features related to alerting would be helpful, including mobile alerts for pipeline issues. Integration with mobile devices for error alerts would simplify information delivery.
Devindra Weerasooriya - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Devtech
Provides a consistent framework for building data integration and access solutions with reliable performance
The in-memory computation feature is certainly helpful for my processing tasks. It is helpful because while using structures that could be held in memory rather than stored during the period of computation, I go for the in-memory option, though there are limitations related to holding it in memory that need to be addressed, but I have a preference for in-memory computation. The solution is beneficial in that it provides a base-level long-held understanding of the framework that is not variant day by day, which is very helpful in my prototyping activity as an architect trying to assess Apache Spark, Great Expectations, and Vault-based solutions versus those proposed by clients like TIBCO or Informatica.
Quotes from Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 Pros
"The initial setup is very easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, where one point is difficult, and ten points are easy."
"We can integrate the tool with other applications easily."
"The most valuable features of this solution are ease of use and implementation."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"The visual workflow aspect of Apache NiFi is an invaluable feature as it operates on a no-code platform that allows for easy drag-and-drop pipeline construction."
"It's an automated flow, where you can build a flow from source to destination, then do the transformation in between."
"Apache NiFi is user-friendly. Its most valuable features for handling large volumes of data include its multitude of integrated endpoints and clients and the ability to create cron jobs to run tasks at regular intervals."
"It is highly effective for handling real-time data by working with APIs for immediate and continuous data extraction."
"I like Apache Spark's flexibility the most. Before, we had one server that would choke up. With the solution, we can easily add more nodes when needed. The machine learning models are also really helpful. We use them to predict energy theft and find infrastructure problems."
"It's easy to prepare parallelism in Spark, run the solution with specific parameters, and get good performance."
"I like that it can handle multiple tasks parallelly. I also like the automation feature. JavaScript also helps with the parallel streaming of the library."
"This solution provides a clear and convenient syntax for our analytical tasks."
"The most significant advantage of Spark 3.0 is its support for DataFrame UDF Pandas UDF features."
"The most valuable feature is the Fault Tolerance and easy binding with other processes like Machine Learning, graph analytics."
"There's a lot of functionality."
"The features we find most valuable are the machine learning, data learning, and Spark Analytics."
 Cons
"There is room for improvement in integration with SSO. For example, NiFi does not have any integration with SSO. And if I want to give some kind of rollback access control across the organization. That is not possible."
"I think the UI interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"The tool should incorporate more tutorials for advanced use cases. It has tutorials for simple use cases."
"More features must be added to the product."
"The quality of JSON data processing could be improved, as JSON workloads require manual conversions without a specific process."
"There should be a better way to integrate a development environment with local tools."
"There are some claims that NiFi is cloud-native but we have tested it, and it's not."
"We run many jobs, and there are already large tables. When we do not control NiFi on time, all reports fail for the day. So it's pretty slow to control, and it has to be improved."
"When you want to extract data from your HDFS and other sources then it is kind of tricky because you have to connect with those sources."
"We are building our own queries on Spark, and it can be improved in terms of query handling."
"If you have a Spark session in the background, sometimes it's very hard to kill these sessions because of D allocation."
"The migration of data between different versions could be improved."
"When using Spark, users may need to write their own parallelization logic, which requires additional effort and expertise."
"It's not easy to install."
"Apache Spark provides very good performance The tuning phase is still tricky."
"Apache Spark can improve the use case scenarios from the website. There is not any information on how you can use the solution across the relational databases toward multiple databases."
 Pricing and Cost Advice
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is open-source."
"We use the free version of Apache NiFi."
"I used the tool's free version."
"Considering the product version used in my company, I feel that the tool is not costly since the product is available for free."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"It is quite expensive. In fact, it accounts for almost 50% of the cost of our entire project."
"I did not pay anything when using the tool on cloud services, but I had to pay on the compute side. The tool is not expensive compared with the benefits it offers. I rate the price as an eight out of ten."
"Since we are using the Apache Spark version, not the data bricks version, it is an Apache license version, the support and resolution of the bug are actually late or delayed. The Apache license is free."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"It is an open-source solution, it is free of charge."
"The solution is affordable and there are no additional licensing costs."
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 Top Industries
By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 Company Size
By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise32
 Questions from the Community
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache NiFi?
Apache NiFi is open-source and free. Its integration with systems like Cloudera can be expensive, but Apache NiFi itself presents the best pricing as a standalone tool.
What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?
The logging system of Apache NiFi needs improvement. It is difficult to debug compared to Airflow ( /products/apache-airflow-reviews ), where task details and issues are clear. With Apache NiFi, I ...
What is your primary use case for Apache NiFi?
I am implementing the ETL workflow using Apache NiFi ( /products/apache-nifi-reviews ) to prepare data and upload it to the cloud. Our use case involves importing data from on-premise and private s...
What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Apache Spark is open-source, so it doesn't incur any charges.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
Regarding Apache Spark, I have only used Apache Spark Structured Streaming, not the machine learning components. I am uncertain about specific improvements needed today. However, after five years, ...
 Comparisons
 Overview
 Sample Customers
Macquarie Telecom Group, Dovestech, Slovak Telekom, Looker, Hastings Group
NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Zadara and others in Compute Service. Updated: October 2025.
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