Yes, Databricks offers a free version called the Databricks Community Edition. Here’s a breakdown of what to expect:

Databricks Community Edition

• Purpose: Ideal for learning Apache Spark, practicing, and building small projects.
  • Features: Limited-size cluster for computation
  • Notebook environment for coding in Python, Scala, SQL, and R
  • Ability to share notebooks with others
• Cost: Databricks charges nothing. However, your cloud provider (like AWS) might charge you minimally for data storage.
  • Limitations: Reduced cluster size compared to paid versions (limits processing power)
  • Doesn’t include advanced features like collaboration tools, job scheduling, or the REST API found in paid tiers.

How to get it: You can sign up for Databricks Community Edition here: https://community.cloud.databricks.com

Alternatives

• Databricks Free Trial: If you need more features or computational power, Databricks offers a 14-day free trial of their entire platform. (https://www.databricks.com/try-databricks)
• Open-Source Apache Spark: You can download and install the core Apache Spark framework on your hardware or cloud instances. This provides the most flexibility but also requires a more technical setup.