Cloudera is a hybrid data platform for big data analytics and AI. See 2026 pricing, features, pros and cons, and how it compares to alternatives.
Cloudera is an enterprise data platform company whose flagship product, Cloudera Data Platform (CDP), lets organizations store, process, govern, and analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data. The platform traces its roots to Apache Hadoop and has since expanded to cover data warehousing, data engineering, machine learning, and real-time streaming under a single governed environment.
Cloudera was founded in 2008 and became one of the best-known commercial Hadoop distributors before merging with rival Hortonworks in 2019. In 2021, KKR and Clayton, Dubilier and Rice acquired the company for approximately 5.3 billion dollars, taking it private after several years on the NYSE.
CDP is built as a hybrid and multi-cloud platform, meaning the same data services can run consistently on-premises, in a private cloud, or across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This lets regulated organizations keep sensitive workloads in place while still using cloud infrastructure for elastic compute where appropriate.
A shared layer called SDX (Shared Data Experience) provides unified security, governance, metadata management, and data lineage across every workload and every deployment environment, which is one of the platform's main differentiators against point-solution cloud data tools.
Cloudera does not publish flat self-serve pricing. Public cloud usage is billed by the hour based on Cloudera Compute Units consumed by a given service, with example rates starting around $0.07 per CCU depending on the service and configuration.
Customers can also purchase prepaid credit packs that can be drawn down against any CDP service, or negotiate annual subscription contracts for private cloud and on-premises deployments, typically after using Cloudera's online pricing calculators or speaking with a sales representative.
No. Cloudera traded on the NYSE under the ticker CLDR from 2017 until it was acquired by KKR and Clayton, Dubilier and Rice for approximately 5.3 billion dollars and became a private company in October 2021.
Cloudera is privately owned by investment firms KKR and Clayton, Dubilier and Rice (CD&R) following their joint 2021 acquisition. The exact ownership split between the two firms has not been publicly disclosed.
Cloudera's platform originated as a commercial distribution of Apache Hadoop and still incorporates Hadoop-derived and related open source technologies such as Spark, Hive, Impala, and Kafka, though Cloudera Data Platform has expanded well beyond a pure Hadoop distribution.
Yes. Cloudera Data Platform is designed to run in a hybrid or multi-cloud fashion across on-premises infrastructure and the major public clouds, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Cloudera does not publish flat pricing. Public cloud services are billed by usage measured in Cloudera Compute Units, with example rates starting around $0.07 per CCU per hour, while on-premises and enterprise deployments require a custom quote from Cloudera sales.
Hortonworks, Cloudera's main Hadoop-distribution rival, merged with Cloudera in January 2019 in a merger of equals, consolidating the two largest independent commercial Hadoop vendors into a single company and product line.
Cloudera competes with cloud-native data platforms such as Databricks and Snowflake, as well as with the native big data and analytics services offered directly by AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Cloudera is widely used by financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, insurance, and government organizations because its hybrid architecture lets sensitive data stay on-premises or in a private cloud while still connecting to public cloud compute when needed.