Microsoft Fabric Notebooks vs Starburst Galaxy

Microsoft Fabric Notebooks is a web-based coding surface for Apache Spark jobs and machine learning experiments. Data engineers and data scientists can import Jupyter .ipynb files and source files in .py, .scala, and .sql formats, then analyze CSV, TXT, JSON, Parquet, and Delta Lake data with Spark. Multiple lakehouses can be attached, with one pinned as default for local-path reads and writes. The Job Scheduler API handles parameterized runs, session and environment settings, runtime and lakehouse selection, monitoring, and cancellation. NotebookUtils works across ADLS Gen2, Azure Blob Storage, and Lakehouse storage and can retrieve Azure Key Vault secrets. Users can co-edit, see cursors and output, and comment on cells. Copilot can generate, refactor, summarize, validate, and repair code with approval. Security includes Entra ID authentication, encryption, private links, customer-managed keys, and outbound protection.

Starburst Galaxy is a managed cloud analytics platform built on Trino. It lets teams query data across sources in one SQL query without copying it, with availability on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Starburst lists more than 50 data sources, including Amazon S3, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery and Azure Blob. Galaxy can stream from Kafka or load CSV, JSON and AVRO files into Iceberg. Its LakeOps service automates Iceberg table compaction, snapshot expiry and orphan-file removal; AIDA converts natural-language questions into governed insights through a customizable interface or MCP. Security provisions include fine-grained RBAC and ABAC, encryption, data classification and private connectivity. Starburst describes Galaxy as SOC 2 Type II certified and HIPAA-ready. A free plan allows up to three clusters for ad hoc queries in standard execution mode. Usage charges vary by plan and cover items such as compute, ingestion and private-link data transfer. A 30-day trial includes Enterprise features and $500 in compute resources. Starburst recommends Galaxy for organizations without resources to manage complex data clusters.