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Aiven Platform vs Confluent comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Aiven Platform
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Aiven Platform is 2.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Confluent is 6.9%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.9%
Aiven Platform2.2%
Other90.9%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

NM
CTO and Co-Founder at PeerSpot
Seamlessly handle database upgrades and minimize downtime disruptions
One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades. It also provides reliable backups. The ability to minimize disruption during upgrades is very important since any database downtime would mean system-wide disruptions.
PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo
Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades."
"What I like best about the tool is that the process for the services is faster compared to other methods. It's easier to use because Aiven for Apache Kafka handles the maintenance, so we have less to manage. We only use Kafka to manage its connectivity."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."
"Some of the best features are that it's very quick to set up, very easy to have a centralized area that gives us a history of changes, and the ability to give feedback on any information placed onto the pages."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
 

Cons

"One challenge we face is when we want to update the version, for example, from 3.6 to 3.7. It will spawn new nodes, and then there's rebalancing and syncing from other brokers. There's high CPU usage during this process, so the solution can't be used for a while, causing some downtime in our services. To tackle this challenge, we schedule maintenance updates during low-traffic periods when there's less risk and fewer users use the services."
"I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution."
"We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."
"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"It comes with a high cost."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
8%
Media Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aiven for Apache Kafka?
I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution. Additionally, the customer service could be more re...
What is your primary use case for Aiven for Apache Kafka?
Our primary use case is having our PostgreSQL and MySQL databases hosted by Aiven Platform. They serve as our production databases.
What advice do you have for others considering Aiven for Apache Kafka?
In our experience, we encountered issues with Aiven Platform's connection to Redis. It was not smooth, and though we like the solution overall, we are hesitant about using Redis integration again. ...
What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about Aiven Platform vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.