Buying snapshot
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| Decision point | What Microsoft states |
|---|---|
Data it reaches | Data warehouses, data lakes, operational databases and big data analytics systems. |
Security controls | Column- and row-level security, dynamic data masking, automated threat detection and always-on encryption. |
Regions | Available in most regions worldwide. Check the Azure products by region page for your region. |
Technical help | The Azure Synapse technical community is on Microsoft Q&A. |
Our take
Choose Azure Synapse Analytics when your data already lives on Azure and you want warehouse queries, Spark work and Power BI reporting in one workspace, with row- and column-level security on data that many teams share.
Evaluate Azure Synapse Analytics
Popular comparisons
See all 7 Azure Synapse Analytics comparisons
Where it stands out
One service for several roles. Microsoft says data engineers, database administrators, data scientists and business analysts can all use the same analytic service, so teams can collaborate and reuse assets. Microsoft says this reduces project development time.
Compute and storage scale separately. The architecture decouples compute from storage, scales each independently and supports open formats. Microsoft also lists workload management and elastic scaling to balance cost and performance.
Analytics without extra copies. Microsoft says you can apply machine learning models to apps without moving data, share data in a few clicks and work directly with Power BI.
Operational data in near real time. Synapse can move data between operational databases and business applications for near-real-time insights.
Product screenshot
Trade-offs to weigh
Microsoft is pointing buyers to Fabric. The Synapse page promotes Microsoft Fabric and offers a migration guide, a readiness assessment tool and the Fabric Migration Assistant for Data Warehouse. Microsoft cites built-in compatibility and shared SQL and Spark foundations. If you are starting a new analytics platform, compare Fabric before you commit to Synapse.
You need your own cost estimate. Under Azure's consumption model you pay for the resources you use, so spend moves with your workload. Microsoft's Azure pricing calculator budgets monthly costs and accounts for region and offers such as reservations and Azure Hybrid Benefit.
Pricing and buying conditions
Microsoft sells Azure Synapse Analytics on a pay-as-you-go, consumption-based pricing model. When you choose an Azure account, you can pay as you go or try Azure free for up to 30 days. For steady usage, Azure also sells commitment-based offers such as reservations and the savings plan for compute; confirm which of them cover the Synapse resources you plan to run. Azure prices are in US dollars worldwide. You can pay by credit card or monthly invoice, but prepaid and virtual credit cards are not accepted, and an account that chooses invoice payment cannot switch to credit card.
Public signals
About these signals
Verified factual signals from public sources. They indicate observable activity or interest, not total adoption, product quality, or cost.
804.1k PyPI weekly downloads394 npm weekly downloads0 vulnerabilities across 2 packages
See all signals from 6 sources
npm · @azure/synapse-artifacts@1.0.0-beta.16 · PyPI · azure-synapse-artifacts@0.22.0
Alternatives to Azure Synapse Analytics
The reviewed substitutes for Azure Synapse Analytics among the cloud data warehouses, and what would make each one the better answer.
Direct alternatives
Reviewed substitutes: products bought for the same job, where a team picks one.
- Vertica
- Vertica and Azure Synapse Analytics both run large analytical SQL workloads as a central warehouse. Synapse is a managed Microsoft service that ties warehousing to Spark and data integration on Azure. Vertica is a columnar database a team installs on-premises or on any cloud, with advanced compression and in-database machine learning.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the cloud data warehouses decision.
- Teradata
- Teradata and Azure Synapse Analytics both handle enterprise-scale data warehousing for reporting and analytics. Synapse is a managed Azure service that adds Spark and pipelines in the same workspace. Teradata Vantage can run on several clouds or on-premises, which suits large companies with mature warehouse workloads spread across environments.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the cloud data warehouses decision.
- Amazon Redshift
- These are the hyperscalers' own cloud data warehouses — Synapse on Azure, BigQuery on GCP, Redshift on AWS — sold for the same workload, on the same consumption model, and normally chosen by which cloud the data already sits in rather than by capability. Nothing restricts the substitution beyond cloud residency.Applies to: Enterprise SQL analytics on a central warehouse: BI dashboards, ad-hoc exploration and scheduled transformation over the same governed dataset. The deciding factor is usually the existing cloud commitment, not the feature set.
- Exasol
- Azure Synapse Analytics and Exasol both run a company's central SQL data warehouse for reporting and analytics. Synapse is Microsoft's managed service on Azure and adds Spark and data integration in the same workspace. Exasol is a commercial in-memory, columnar engine that a team can run on its own servers or in the cloud, with a focus on raw query speed.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the cloud data warehouses decision.
- Firebolt
- Firebolt and Azure Synapse Analytics are cloud data warehouses for SQL analytics at scale. Firebolt focuses on low-latency, high-concurrency queries, which suits dashboards and data apps that many users hit at once. Synapse leans toward breadth on Azure, with Spark, serverless SQL and data integration in one Microsoft workspace.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the cloud data warehouses decision.
Other approaches
A different approach to the same problem. Each substitutes only for the workload named beside it.
- Databricks
- On Azure, the cloud data warehouse can be Databricks or Azure Synapse Analytics. Synapse is Microsoft's own analytics service with dedicated and serverless SQL pools plus Spark. Databricks adds SQL warehousing to a lakehouse built on Spark, Delta Lake and ML tooling, so the pick turns on whether the warehouse should sit on open lakehouse storage.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the cloud data warehouses decision.
- MotherDuck
- MotherDuck and Azure Synapse Analytics each give a data team a managed SQL warehouse in the cloud. Synapse is a broad Microsoft service that adds Spark and data pipelines and suits organisations standardised on Azure. MotherDuck is a lighter serverless warehouse built on DuckDB, with queries that can run partly on a local machine.Applies to: For data teams on Azure that need SQL analytics only, without Spark or built-in pipelines.