--- title: Apache Phoenix Reviews meta_title: 'Apache Phoenix Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 27 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Apache Phoenix works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 3.7 review_count: 27 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' parent_category: name: Database Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/database-software --- # Apache Phoenix Reviews **Vendor:** The Apache Software Foundation **Category:** [Relational Databases](https://www.g2.com/categories/relational-databases) **Average Rating:** 3.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 27 ## About Apache Phoenix Apache Phoenix is an open source, massively parallel, relational database engine supporting OLTP for Hadoop using Apache HBase as its backing store. ## Apache Phoenix Reviews ### 1. Not very developer friendly **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aritra N. | Senior Software Development Engineer in Test, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** SQL like syntax is the only thing positive **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phoenix is still very primitive and does not offer easy SQL syntaxes. The errors/ exceptions are hard to understand, and development is slow. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Do not expect much support from the community. Have created a ticket for over one and a half years and still it is unattended. Would have been great for the ticket to be solved as it would have solved a very common problem in big data loading into HBase tables via Apache Phoenix's Hadoop Map-Reduce program. Have provided detailed screenshots, steps to reproduce, etc. But when checked a few days ago, the ticket has not been picked up. Hence, I think it will be very painful for anyone to do advanced stuff with Apache Phoenix in the long run. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Was trying to process our OLTP big data store. The only benefits are the SQL-like syntaxes and the that it can talk to HBase easily. The most positive point is that HBase and Apache Phoenix go hand in hand and so it is fairly easy to integrate your HBase tables with Apache Phoenix. The upsert statements are also helpful and there is a handly Hadoop Map Reduce program that you can execute from your Java program to load gigabytes of data to your HBase tables. This Map Reduce feature is the most beneficial aspect I have found off of Apache Phoenix. Note that, you can also use the command line to do the same operation. ### 2. Apache Phoenix is the fastest way to use SQL to access data in HBase **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Clif K. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phoenix provides access to data that's stored in HBase which is a column oriented database. HBase doesn't natively support SQL or really any query language. The HBase shell has a scan command for accessing data but I find it extremely awkward to use. Phoenix "puts the SQL back in NoSQL" so that means if you know SQL you can query data in HBase using a language you know. While there are multiple ways to access data in HBase through SQL including Apache Hive, Impala and Drill, I think Apache Phoenix has a better design than any of the alternatives. Unlike most relational databases that require schema design before you can add data, HBase is essentially schemaless. However all of these tools require a schema, so that means in order to use them you have to fist map the fields in HBase (at least the ones you want to use) to a metadata layer. Hive/Impala, Drill and Phoenix each do this in their own unique way, but I think the way you do this in Phoenix is the most logical. Also in my experience Phoenix provides better throughput than any of the alternatives because it converts SQL queries into HBase scans. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** You do have to create the Phoenix schema manually. Unlike the alternatives Phoenix can only access data stored in HBase, so if you want to combine data from different data sources, such as CSV or JSON files you need to use something else. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Remember one thing: even though Apache Phoenix makes HBase look like a relational database it does not turn it into one. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing access to business intelligence tools for data in HBase through JDBC. This makes HBase data appear the same as data in relational databases. Data in HBase can be combined with other data sources. ### 3. See Hadoop for low latency applications. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jannier M. | Applications and Web security, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Complete and flexible ACID transaction capacity, NoSQL schema reading by taking advantage of speed and fast HBase query. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Everything has to be done manually, an error is difficult to find to correct with the lack of data and information. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Integrate system for data analysis and immediate consultation, activity control and personalized data. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data repository for immediate consultation, administrator and analytics of thousands of data integrated or installed. ### 4. Apache Phoenix : A dual edged sword for Apache HBase **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yashasvi D. | Software Developer - Advanced, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Through documentation is available which makes it easy to start and setup. One gets to work with the comfortable SQL syntax without being bothered to crawl through HBase help docs for shell syntax. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Tables created from HBase shell have to be mapped separately in Phoenix. Bulk loading data to tables created via Phoenix is not as straight forward as for tables created from HBase shell. Apache Phoenix's capabilities depends heavily on HBase coprocessors making it tightly coupled to HBase Architecture, which is a challenge as Phoenix needs to be revamped with every Major release of Apache HBase, and due to this fact Apache Phoenix is less reliant in Production environment. Switching through Index (Global to Local and vice versa)on a table becomes a pain point. Integration with Apache Spark needs to be improved on. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** HBase is the product is being used as Unique data repository, Apache Phoenix is used to perform Data Steward operation before being consumed by down stream system. ### 5. Apache Phoenix has high performance capabilities if you are working with Hadoop technologies **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arunesh T. | Lead Assistant Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 02, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** When working with high volume of data, Apache phoenix will provide high performance and helps you in performance tuning and also provide some additional features which will help you get the results faster in very less time for complex query also. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** It is new and open source so you have to explore most of the things by yourself. The more you explore the more you like this. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Yes,you can give a shot as it is open source software and can review this by yourself. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used Apache phoenix for analytics purpose when we are working on huge volume data say as billion of records. This will help you in working with huge volume of data. I will suggest that give it a shot as this is open source and you will see the difference with trade mark products. ### 6. Growing Project, but a long way to go. Used it for a gigantic table (~1TB) to query data for a API **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kartik M. | Lead Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Response time ~ hbase query, SQL support with JDBC standards Phoenix is developing gradually and with hbase 2.0 support it has reached good. It's the option explored when we wanted something cheap which can sit inside our emr cluster. having EMR is good on it. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** installation steps, no window func, not using proper error message instead giving stacktrace (though sometimes more useful) but should be logged, spark support was very late, documentation is not verbose, bad orm library (not widely supported by other ORM)) unfortunately phoenix popularity is dependent on hbase, and hbase is somewhat not in talks very much. I find no cloud provider is giving serverless hbase/phoenix hosting. EMR is managed but emr support team is quite limited with knowledge with in phoenix specially. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Try all SQL queries first that would be required. Eg. window function, ranks are not there. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Bulk Tools is pain, we use csv dump as of now. CSV dump misses a lot of features (compare with pg copy command) We have just 1 table which has a row combination of 2 cols. The table contains ~1TB of data. Benefits - Very cost effective, using existing resources hbase, hadoop. Good for a direct usecase (but if someone wants a primary db better to try other dbs like cassandra, mongo etc based on use case) Bulk Tools are something very good and I first used it with phoenix , however support for more formats like parquet, orc should be used built in bulk tools because data isn't store in csv/json/tsv on datalake) ### 7. SQL query **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sebastian S. | Software engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Integrate Apache HBase and automatic database backup **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** I have no problems with integration and extra API **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Server control system **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hadoop analysis and API for SQL database ### 8. Apache Phoenix: A very powerful tool to deal with hbase **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 28, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** It helped me a lot in dealing with Hbase data. As i can't directly execute sql query on HBase, it enabled me to execute sql like query to deal with data. Also the support was easily available on internet if i get stuck somewhere. Configuring it with the application and setting it up was also very easy. It made the work with large amount of data very easy without any performance issue. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** At one side it's strong point is that enables query execution and on the other side it's limitation is also with query. As it doesn't support update command in starting i faced a lot of issue. Upsert command is there but still in many scenarios i faced much difficulty to properly execute it. If we can have update command in this it would be a very good point so this can be improved. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** It's a good tool to interact with Hbase. If you are using HBase in your application then i will say for sure you should go with Apache Phoenix. It will make your work a lot easier. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using it to interact with Hbase and handle large amount of data for our application. It makes the work easier which in absence of phoenix would be very difficult. ### 9. Advance user of Apache Phoenix - Enterprise domain architect review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** We use hortonworks with hbase as our back end system. we have Apache phoenix on top of it , which is used by our BI team. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Using ETL tools for more transformations, its not that easy as typical MSSQL Servers **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** If you have hbase then Apache phoenix is very good combination. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have huge data - data keeps coming every day ( 10 to 20 GB of data ),is that it provides access to HBase using an interface that most programmers are familiar with, namely JDBC ### 10. I worked apache Phoenix on top of HBase while working on Spark **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subhankar B. | Senior Technical Consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** We can use SQl operations without knowing hbase query syntax. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** The Phoenix JDBC driver normalizes column names, but the Phoenix-Spark integration does not perform this operation while loading data from Phoenix Table. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** I will recommend Apache Phoenix who would like to integrate apache hbase with spark. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have used apache Phoenix on top of hbase ,for that we didn't require to write hbase query simple sql query was efficient. ## Apache Phoenix Discussions - [What is Phoenix schema?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-phoenix-schema) - [What is Phoenix in Hadoop?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-phoenix-in-hadoop) - [Is Apache Phoenix good?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-apache-phoenix-good) - [What is Apache Phoenix used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-apache-phoenix-used-for) - [View Apache Phoenix pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-phoenix/reviews/apache-phoenix-review-4558019?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-16+17%3A49%3A42+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=bd804d8f-bed9-4f92-87b6-708ba8b4c551&secure%5Btoken%5D=ba40759a1f73569cb9ca912384bb322ac36b252837b4650cda3bd94c4ecc9319&format=llm_user) ## Apache Phoenix Features **Management ** - Data Schema - Query Language - ACID - Complaint - Data Replication **Support ** - Text Search - Data Types - Languages - Operating Systems **Security** - Database Locking - Access Control - Encryption - Authentication **Performance ** - Disaster Recovery - Data Concurrency - Workload Management - Advanced Indexing - Query Optimizer **Database Features** - Storage - Availability - Stability - Scalability - Security - Data Manipulation - Query Language ## Top Apache Phoenix Alternatives - [MySQL](https://www.g2.com/products/mysql/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,580 reviews) - [Microsoft SQL Server](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-sql-server/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (2,128 reviews) - [PostgreSQL](https://www.g2.com/products/postgresql/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (651 reviews)