What is Databricks used for?

Databricks is a commercial lakehouse platform that unifies data engineering, SQL analytics, governance and machine learning for enterprise data and AI teams. It is a good fit for building data pipelines at enterprise scale, training and deploying machine learning models, and replacing a separate lake and warehouse stack.

Yes. Databricks has a free plan.

Is Databricks open source?

No. Databricks is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Databricks include Apache Spark, Pachyderm and Dremio OSS.

What are some alternatives to Databricks?

Databricks competes with Snowflake, Google BigQuery and MotherDuck. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Databricks alternatives.

Databricks: features, pricing and alternatives

About Databricks

Databricks is a hosted platform that combines the flexibility of a data lake with the structure of a warehouse, an approach it calls the lakehouse. It is aimed at data engineers, analysts and machine learning teams that want to work on the same data in a single environment instead of moving it between separate systems.

According to its own materials, the platform covers ETL and orchestration for batch and streaming data, a serverless data warehouse for SQL analytics, governance, and tools for building AI applications, including an assistant for business users. It is built around Apache Spark and runs on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Databricks is a commercial product billed on usage rather than a self-hosted download, so it suits organizations ready to run data workloads on a managed cloud service.

Key features

Unified platform for data, analytics and AI
ETL and orchestration for batch and streaming data
Serverless data warehouse for SQL analytics
Centralized data governance and access controls
Machine learning and AI model development tools
Runs on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

Good fit for

→Building data pipelines at enterprise scale
→Training and deploying machine learning models
→Replacing a separate lake and warehouse stack

Tags: lakehouse; data-engineering; analytics; machine-learning; spark; data-platform; etl

Databricks: questions and answers

What is Databricks used for?: Databricks is a commercial lakehouse platform that unifies data engineering, SQL analytics, governance and machine learning for enterprise data and AI teams. It is a good fit for building data pipelines at enterprise scale, training and deploying machine learning models, and replacing a separate lake and warehouse stack.
Is Databricks free?: Yes. Databricks has a free plan.
Is Databricks open source?: No. Databricks is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Databricks include Apache Spark, Pachyderm and Dremio OSS.
What are some alternatives to Databricks?: Databricks competes with Snowflake, Google BigQuery and MotherDuck. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Databricks alternatives.