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What's the Difference Between AWS Glue and AWS Glue DataBrew?

Compare AWS Glue and AWS Glue DataBrew side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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AWS Glue
AWS Glue DataBrew
Category

Analytics, Data integration / ETL

Analytics, Data Preparation
Description

Simple, scalable, and serverless data integration

Visual data preparation tool for cleaning and normalizing data without writing code.
Best for
  • ETL
  • Data cataloging
  • Data preparation
  • Data lake management
  • Event-driven ETL
  • Data cleaning
  • Data normalization
  • Data profiling
  • Feature engineering
Key features
  • Data Catalog
  • ETL engine
  • Crawlers
  • Job bookmarks
  • DataBrew
  • 250+ transformations
  • Visual interface
  • Data profiling
  • Recipe jobs
  • S3/Redshift/RDS sources
Pricing model

Pay per DPU-hour

Pay per DataBrew session + node hours
Free tier

Yes

Yes
Expert take

“Glue Data Catalog is the metadata backbone for Athena, Redshift Spectrum, and EMR; it tells them where data lives and what it looks like. The ETL engine runs Spark under the hood but with serverless scaling. Use crawlers to auto-discover schemas and partitions in S3.”
— Giovanni Lauria, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Glue DataBrew provides a visual interface for data cleaning and normalization with 250+ built-in transformations. It generates profile reports that highlight data quality issues.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about AWS Glue »

Learn more about AWS Glue DataBrew »

When to use AWS Glue or AWS Glue DataBrew

Use AWS Glue when:

  • ETL
  • Data cataloging
  • Data preparation
  • Data lake management
  • Event-driven ETL

Learn more about AWS Glue »

Use AWS Glue DataBrew when:

  • Data cleaning
  • Data normalization
  • Data profiling
  • Feature engineering

Learn more about AWS Glue DataBrew »

AWS product comparisons

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