Aiven Platform vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

Aiven and Starburst are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Aiven is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0, while Starburst is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.5. Aiven holds a 2.4% mindshare in SA, compared to Starburst’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Aiven users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Starburst users who would recommend it.

Aiven Platform

Read 5 Aiven Platform reviews

1,333 Views
1,293 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Starburst Galaxy

Read 11 Starburst Galaxy reviews

1,809 Views
850 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Aiven Platform

Starburst Galaxy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Aiven Platform and Starburst Galaxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Streaming Analytics solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Aiven Platform vs. Starburst Galaxy Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Aiven Platform vs. Starburst Galaxy

June 2026

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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

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Starburst Galaxy

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

8th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

2.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Science Platforms (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Aiven Platform is 2.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Starburst Galaxy	1.7%
Aiven Platform	2.4%
Other	95.9%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

Abdulmunafz Mct

Full Stack Developer at Sri Krishna Arts and Science

Managed cloud databases have reduced operational effort and now support faster feature delivery

Aiven Platform could be improved by offering more detailed monitoring and analytics, additional customization plan options, enhanced cost operation insights, and more comprehensive data for advanced use cases. On a day-to-day basis, I highlight the need for improving dashboard navigation by providing clear cost visibility. There are navigational complexities that exist. If you can provide clear cost visibility, it will help reduce friction and improve the user experience. Regarding Aiven Platform's AI capabilities, I think it could improve by providing more granular role-based access control, enhancing audit logging, clearer compliance reporting, and more centralized policy management for governance and security.

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Niketan Kumar

Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies

Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery

Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

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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."

"Based on my experience with Aiven Platform, the best feature it offers is Apache Kafka, which is top-notch and one of the best services I have used."

"The performance of Aiven Platform is quite good, as I have not seen any downtime, and it is very reliable, with backups in place, allowing me to fetch data without experiencing any high latency, even as a free tier user."

"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."

"Aiven Platform delivers highly accurate and reliable outputs with consistent performance, and its managed services, monitoring, and high availability features help to ensure data integrity and minimize downtime, highlighting the accuracy and reliability of the output."

"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."

"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."

"Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to rethink the strategy for data and architect data differently; instead of having multiple data marts and siloed data marts, we have a unified vision, and that is how it is changing."

"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."

"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."

"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."

"Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best."

"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."

More Starburst Galaxy pros

Cons

"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."

"Regarding needed improvements, I find the support and documentation a bit lacking in detail, and sometimes it takes long to get replies when I need support, which can be a challenge."

"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 like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."

"I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs."

"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."

"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."

"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."

"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."

"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."

"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."

More Starburst Galaxy cons

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Construction Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aiven for Apache Kafka?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Aiven for Apache Kafka?

My main use case for Aiven Platform is managing our databases and data services, which is reliable and has good performance for less operational overhead. When I say I use it for managing databases...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Aiven for Apache Kafka?

My advice for others looking into using Aiven Platform is that if they are managing a Postgres database, they need to switch to Aiven Platform. It is truly worth it for the automatic management, au...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?

I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?

Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose. We rely on third-party tools for ingesti...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?

My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is querying petabytes of data across vast data sources, and I use a federated query engine to join data sources from different databases and then join them usi...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Aiven Platform

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Starburst Galaxy

June 2026

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Overview

Aiven for Apache Kafka is a robust data streaming platform utilized for real-time analytics, event-driven architectures, and message brokering, enhancing data processing across systems. It features scalable operations, excellent data replication, and comprehensive monitoring, significantly improving organizational efficiency and decision-making processes through high-level data management capabilities.

Aiven

Starburst Galaxy offers rapid query speeds and robust cluster management, enhancing data engineering efficiency while supporting AWS integrations and cross-database functionality. Users benefit from its advanced data integration and federated querying capabilities.

Starburst Galaxy stands out with a compute-focused architecture that excels in facilitating seamless data integration. Technological innovations like autoscaling clusters and automated metadata management optimize operations in multi-tenant environments. With a keen emphasis on compatibility, the platform provides support for AWS Glue and enables federated querying across S3, Snowflake, and Redshift. This adaptability ensures comprehensive ETL processes and enhances analytics through querying SQL Server, Google Sheets, and blob stores. While noted for its robust capabilities, users seek improvements in cluster startup times, Tableau and AI support, and desire infrastructure-as-code enhancements.

What are Starburst Galaxy's key features?

Rapid Query Speeds: Enhances data processing with quick responses.
Cluster Autoscaling: Optimizes resource allocation for varying workloads.
Federated Querying: Cross-database functionality for seamless integration.
Compute-Focused Architecture: Ensures efficiency and scalability.
Automated Metadata Management: Streamlines data handling processes.
AWS Integration: Broad compatibility with AWS services.

What benefits should users evaluate in reviews?

Data Engineering Efficiency: Reduces operating expenses and improves productivity.
Cost Reduction: Highlights lower storage costs with efficient data handling.
Seamless Integration: Enables robust data integration across various platforms.
Cluster Management: Supports diverse workloads with advanced management tools.

In industries focusing on large-scale data efforts, Starburst Galaxy plays an essential role in connecting data sources like Amazon S3 and RDS, streamlining tasks in data engineering and ad-hoc analysis across complex environments. Teams leverage its cross-database querying to boost AWS analytics, with features tailored for sectors needing agile data solutions, from ETL pipelines to secure data federation.

Starburst

Buyer's Guide

Aiven Platform vs. Starburst Galaxy

June 2026

Free Report: Aiven Platform vs. Starburst Galaxy

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