Amazon Kinesis vs Redpanda comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Redpanda Data are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8, while Redpanda Data is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.5% mindshare in SA, compared to Redpanda Data’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Redpanda Data users who would recommend it.

Amazon Kinesis

Read 29 Amazon Kinesis reviews

2,683 Views
2,683 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Redpanda

Read 4 Redpanda reviews

434 Views
421 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon Kinesis

Redpanda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Amazon Kinesis and Redpanda compete in the data streaming sector. Kinesis seems to have the upper hand due to its integration within the AWS ecosystem and real-time data processing capabilities.

Features: Amazon Kinesis is praised for its seamless integration with AWS services, real-time data processing, and scalability. It is easy to manage due to its fully-hosted nature. Redpanda is noted for its high-speed data streaming and efficient resource utilization thanks to its C++ foundation. It performs exceptionally well in self-hosted setups.

Room for Improvement: Amazon Kinesis could improve its sharding capabilities and increase default limits. Integration with other cloud services can be limited, and Kinesis Data Analytics might benefit from simplification. Redpanda’s version control requires enhancements, its documentation needs clarity, and its command-line tools could become more user-friendly.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon Kinesis offers ease of deployment in public cloud environments but has room for improvement in technical support. Redpanda supports both on-premises and cloud deployment, though users find its documentation and support could be improved.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Kinesis is moderately priced and offers good ROI through AWS integration, though analytics features can be costly. Its cost can be higher than self-hosted solutions. Redpanda offers competitive pricing and free versions, making it cost-effective against Kafka while considering its high performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Kinesis vs. Redpanda Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis vs. Redpanda

September 2025

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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

Amazon Kinesis

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Redpanda

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

17th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon Kinesis is 6.5%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon Kinesis	6.5%
Redpanda	1.5%
Other	92.0%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

Rajni Kumar Jha

Senior Software Engineer at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Used for media streaming and live-streaming data

It is not compulsory to use Amazon Kinesis. If you don't want to use the data streaming, you can use just the Kinesis data firehose. Using the Kinesis data firehose is compulsory because we can't store all chats and recordings in Amazon S3 without it. When a call comes in the Amazon Kinesis instance, it will go to Data Streams if we use it. Otherwise, it will go to the Kinesis data firehose, where we need to define the S3 bucket path, and it will go to Amazon S3. So, without the Kinesis data firehose, we can't store all the chats and recordings in Amazon S3. Using Amazon Kinesis totally depends upon the user's requirements. If you want to use live streaming for the data lake or data analyst team, you need to use Amazon Kinesis. If you don't want to use it, you can directly use the Kinesis data firehose, which will be stored in Amazon S3. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

Affordable, easy to deploy, and it is easy to find things on the user interface

We use the libraries in the different programming languages. We use the message format in Avro, convert the data in the format, and pass it on. We have contacted the sales team about the solution. So far, the product fulfills our requirements. We get lots of data. The data flows through Kafka to Redpanda. Then it goes to a database. If our infrastructure goes down for a week, we will not lose data. It is an advantage of Redpanda. I recommend the product to others. We might choose a different solution if we find something cheaper. We used Redpanda because we did not want to self-host our software. Redpanda is a piece of infrastructure. There is not much of a learning curve. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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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

"The solution's technical support is flawless."

"From my experience, one of the most valuable features is the ability to track silent events on endpoints. Previously, these events might have gone unnoticed, but now we can access them within the product range. For example, if a customer reports that their calls are not reaching the portal files, we can use this feature to troubleshoot and optimize the system."

"The Kinesis VideoStream and DataStream are the most important features."

"The management and analytics are valuable features."

"Its scalability is very high. There is no maintenance and there is no throughput latency. I think data scalability is high, too. You can ingest gigabytes of data within seconds or milliseconds."

"I like the ease of use and how we can quickly get the configurations done, making it pretty straightforward and stable."

"I find almost all features valuable, especially the timing and fast pace movement."

"One of the best features of Amazon Kinesis is the multi-partition."

More Amazon Kinesis pros

"I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable."

"The UI is modern."

"The cost savings have been significant."

"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."

Cons

"Could include features that make it easier to scale."

"Snapshot from the the from the the stream of the data analytic I have already on the cloud, do a snapshot to not to make great or to get the data out size of the web service. But to stop the process and restart a few weeks later when I have more data or more available of the client teams."

"The price is not much cheaper. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing."

"We are contemplating moving away from Amazon Kinesis primarily because of the cost."

"Amazon Kinesis could improve its pricing to be more competitive, especially for large volumes."

"The services which are described in the documentation could use some visual presentation because for someone who is new to the solution the documentation is not easy to follow or beginner friendly and can leave a person feeling helpless."

"I think the default settings are far too low."

"Amazon Kinesis involved a more complex setup and configuration than Azure Event Hub."

More Amazon Kinesis cons

"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."

"The version control mechanism must be improved."

"Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good."

"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fair."

"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"Amazon Kinesis is an expensive solution."

"Under $1,000 per month."

"I think for us, with Amazon Kinesis, if we have to set up our own Kafka or cluster, it will be very time-consuming. If one considers the aforementioned aspect, Amazon Kinesis is a cheap tool."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

"The product falls on a bit of an expensive side."

"It was actually a fairly high volume we were spending. We were spending about 150 a month."

More Amazon Kinesis pricing and cost advice

"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."

"Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	9

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Kinesis?

Amazon Kinesis's main purpose is to provide near real-time data streaming at a consistent 2Mbps rate, which is really impressive.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Kinesis?

Amazon Kinesis and Lambda pricing is competitive, but we noticed that scaling and large volumes could potentially increase costs significantly.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Kinesis?

We are contemplating moving away from Amazon Kinesis primarily because of the cost. It is very useful, but if we write our own analytics and data processing pipeline, it would be much cheaper for u...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?

Redpanda is actually a commercial platform, but they do provide free versions as well. I've been working only with the free versions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Redpanda?

Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good. Maybe ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Redpanda?

I have worked with Redpanda for the past two to three months. Mainly in the tech industry or software industry, there's a huge rise of streaming data. Redpanda serves as a very reliable and fast me...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 24% of the time

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Compared 21% of the time

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 20% of the time

Databricks vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon MSK vs Amazon Kinesis

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Apache Pulsar vs Redpanda

Compared 32% of the time

More Redpanda Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis

November 2025

Download Amazon Kinesis product report

Buyer's Guide

Redpanda

October 2025

Download Redpanda product report

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Kinesis, AWS Kinesis, Kinesis

No data available

Overview

Amazon Kinesis makes it easy to collect, process, and analyze real-time, streaming data so you can get timely insights and react quickly to new information. Amazon Kinesis offers key capabilities to cost-effectively process streaming data at any scale, along with the flexibility to choose the tools that best suit the requirements of your application. With Amazon Kinesis, you can ingest real-time data such as video, audio, application logs, website clickstreams, and IoT telemetry data for machine learning, analytics, and other applications. Amazon Kinesis enables you to process and analyze data as it arrives and respond instantly instead of having to wait until all your data is collected before the processing can begin.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Redpanda offers a modern, intuitive interface with efficient resource usage, seamlessly integrating with Kafka, and enhancing performance through fast operations and reliable support. Organizations benefit from its memory efficiency and high performance for demanding data workloads.

Built on a C++ foundation, Redpanda integrates easily with Kafka clients and stands out for fast operations, simplified Docker setup, and effective metrics monitoring. Performance is enhanced by memory efficiency and high throughput capabilities. The community provides robust support, and clear documentation aids the adoption process. However, improvements could be made in version control, command-line tools, and documentation, particularly in areas such as automation file management and chatbot documentation assistance. Redpanda is widely utilized in data streaming and normalization, efficiently handling large telemetry data volumes with minimal latency, essential for building asynchronous applications across microservices and monitoring systems.

What are the most important features of Redpanda?

Modern UI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Efficient Resource Usage: Built on C++ for performance optimization.
Seamless Integration: Works well with Kafka clients for smooth operations.
Simplified Setup: Docker templates facilitate easy installation.
Built-in Metrics Exporters: Enhance monitoring and visibility.
High Performance: Ensures memory efficiency and quick data processing.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Fast Operations: Accelerates data processing for efficient workflows.
Reliable Support: Strong community aids troubleshooting and development.
Clear Documentation: Helps users quickly onboard and manage Redpanda.
Low Latency: Critical for applications requiring quick response times.
Sub-second Response: Supports demanding performance and latency needs.

Redpanda is commonly implemented in tech and software industries to streamline data streaming and normalization processes, handling high telemetry data volumes effectively. Its capacity for sub-second response times makes it crucial for companies developing asynchronous applications, especially in microservices and monitoring systems.

Redpanda Data

Sample Customers

Zillow, Netflix, Sonos

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis vs. Redpanda

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon Kinesis vs. Redpanda

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