# Apache NiFi vs Apache Spark

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Apache NiFi

| Attribute | Apache NiFi | Apache Spark |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 67.8 (39% (low)) | 60.5 (38% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 93 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 8,896 |
| adoption.github_stars | 6,208 | 43,882 |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Apache NiFi is an open-source data orchestration platform that enables reliable, guaranteed-delivery processing and routing of data flows with complete tracking and provenance. It provides visual pipeline design, real-time configuration changes, and extensive integrations with enterprise systems, cloud services, and data platforms. | Apache Spark is an open-source, multi-language distributed computing engine that unifies data engineering, data science, and machine learning workloads. It processes data at scale using batch or streaming paradigms, provides SQL query capabilities for analytics, and includes built-in libraries for machine learning and graph processing. |
| features.capabilities | `{"cdc":true,"role":"orchestrator","lineage":true,"paradigm":"both","data_quality":true,"elt_pushdown":false,"connector_count":"200+","self_hosted_oss":true}` | `{"role":"engine","paradigm":"both","self_hosted_oss":true,"distributed_executor":true}` |
| integrations.count | 200 | 5 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Amazon S3"},{"name":"Amazon SQS"},{"name":"Amazon DynamoDB"},{"name":"Amazon Lambda"},{"name":"Amazon Kinesis"},{"name":"Amazon Polly"},{"name":"Amazon Transcribe"},{"name":"Amazon Translate"},{"name":"Amazon Textract"},{"name":"CloudWatch"},{"name":"Azure Blob Storage"},{"name":"Azure Data Lake Storage"},{"name":"Azure Event Hub"},{"name":"Azure Cosmos DB"},{"name":"Azure Data Explorer"},{"name":"Azure Queue Storage"},{"name":"Google Cloud Pub/Sub"},{"name":"Google BigQuery"},{"name":"Google Cloud Vision"},{"name":"Google Drive"},{"name":"Apache Kafka"},{"name":"Apache MQTT"},{"name":"Apache JMS"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Splunk"},{"name":"Salesforce"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"HubSpot"},{"name":"Shopify"},{"name":"Zendesk"},{"name":"Workday"},{"name":"Box"},{"name":"Dropbox"},{"name":"SFTP"},{"name":"FTP"},{"name":"SMB"},{"name":"HTTP"},{"name":"IMAP"},{"name":"POP3"},{"name":"SMTP"},{"name":"Snowflake"},{"name":"BigQuery"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"JDBC"},{"name":"Airtable"},{"name":"SNMP"},{"name":"Syslog"},{"name":"Iceberg"}]` | `[{"name":"Hadoop"},{"name":"HDFS"},{"name":"YARN"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"Docker"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | Scala |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"cli":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://nifi.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T23:04:43.895Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://spark.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T13:48:09.654Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 40 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/nifi/releases/tag/rel/nifi-2.11.0","date":"2026-08-03T08:51:21Z","type":"stable","version":"rel/nifi-2.11.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/nifi/releases/tag/rel/nifi-2.10.0","date":"2026-06-23T11:05:48Z","type":"stable","version":"rel/nifi-2.10.0"}]` | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7 | 5.6 |
| security.vulnerabilities | - | `{"count":7,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.apache.spark%3Aspark-core_2.10&per_page=100","last_12m":1,"max_severity":"CRITICAL"}` |

## Capabilities (Data Engineering Tools)

| Capability | Apache NiFi | Apache Spark |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Tool role | Orchestrator | Processing engine |
| Processing paradigm | Batch + streaming | Batch + streaming |
| **Connectivity** |  |  |
| Connector count | 200+ | - |
| CDC / log-based replication | ✓ | - |
| **Transformation** |  |  |
| In-warehouse transformation (push-down) | ✗ | - |
| dbt-native orchestration | - | - |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Self-hosted / open-source available | ✓ | ✓ |
| Managed cloud available | - | - |
| **Governance** |  |  |
| Data lineage / asset catalog | ✓ | - |
| **Authoring** |  |  |
| Python-first authoring | - | - |
| **Execution** |  |  |
| Incremental / partition-aware runs | - | - |
| **Quality** |  |  |
| Built-in data quality / tests | ✓ | - |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Horizontal scale (distributed executor) | - | ✓ |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T16:33:14.803Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*