Amazon Kinesis vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Starburst are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8, while Starburst is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.7. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.7% mindshare in SA, compared to Starburst’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Starburst users who would recommend it.

Amazon Kinesis

Read 29 Amazon Kinesis reviews

2,858 Views
2,858 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Starburst Galaxy

Read 9 Starburst Galaxy reviews

616 Views
437 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon Kinesis

Starburst Galaxy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon Kinesis 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 Amazon Kinesis vs. Starburst Galaxy Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis vs. Starburst Galaxy

September 2025

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Helped 869,202 peers since 2012

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

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Starburst Galaxy

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

12th

Average Rating

9.8

Reviews Sentiment

1.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Science Platforms (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon Kinesis is 6.7%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.3%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon Kinesis	6.7%
Starburst Galaxy	1.3%
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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Stephen-Howard

Sr Director, Technology at Spreetail

Federated querying delivers integrated data at record speed and reduces processing time

The biggest win has been the ability to combine data from multiple sources and deliver it to the business at record speed. This capability has allowed us to query directly through Starburst Galaxy, enabling teams to access integrated data that would otherwise be hard to pull together. This has reduced both our ETL processing time and storage costs. We are answering questions that would have been hard, if not impossible, to answer previously because the data came from disparate, disconnected sources.

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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

"I have worked in companies that build tools in-house. They face scaling challenges."

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

"The feature that I've found most valuable is the replay. That is one of the most valuable in our business. We are business-to-business so replay was an important feature - being able to replay for 24 hours. That's an important feature."

"Amazon Kinesis is easy to get started with, provides good documentation, and has a multilang daemon interface that makes it programming-language agnostic."

"Amazon Kinesis also provides us with plenty of flexibility."

"The product's initial setup phase is not difficult because we are using the tool on the cloud."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon Kinesis is real-time data streaming."

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

More Amazon Kinesis pros

"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 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."

"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."

"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 serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."

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

Cons

"The tool should focus on having an alert system rather than having to use a third-party solution."

"Kinesis Data Analytics needs to be improved somewhat. It's SQL based data but it is not as user friendly as MySQL or Athena tools."

"In order to do a successful setup, the person handling the implementation needs to know the solution very well. You can't just come into it blind and with little to no experience."

"Lacks first in, first out queuing."

"Amazon Kinesis should improve its limits."

"Kinesis is good for Amazon Cloud but not as suitable for other cloud vendors."

"It would be beneficial if Amazon Kinesis provided document based support on the internet to be able to read the data from the Kinesis site."

"There are certain shortcomings in the machine learning capacity offered by the product, making it an area where improvements are required."

More Amazon Kinesis cons

"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."

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

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

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution's pricing is fair."

"Amazon Kinesis pricing is sometimes reasonable and sometimes could be better, depending on the planning, so it's a five out of ten for me."

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

"The pricing depends on the use cases and the level of usage. If you wanted to use Kinesis for different use cases, there's definitely a cheaper base cost involved. However, it's not entirely cheap, as different use cases might require different levels of Kinesis usage."

"The fee is based on the number of hours the service is running."

"The tool's entry price is cheap. However, pricing increases with data volume."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

More Amazon Kinesis pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Consumer Goods Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	1

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?

Amazon Kinesis could improve its pricing to be more competitive, especially for large volumes. Also, the KCL library's documentation could be improved to better explain the configuration parameters...

See all answers

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

You pay for cluster uptime. It is important to be aggressive about autoscaling, as a single worker will get you a long way. I recommend never connecting a BI tool to your Galaxy cluster. Instead, w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?

As a hosted option, I wish I had more control over the cluster configuration, specifically regarding some of the more advanced options. Trino is extremely flexible and powerful, but some of this fu...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?

I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources. It is surprisingly useful to query SQL Server, a Google Sh...

See all answers

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Compared 29% of the time

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Compared 19% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis

October 2025

Download Amazon Kinesis product report

Buyer's Guide

Starburst Galaxy

September 2025

Download Starburst Galaxy 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)

Starburst Galaxy offers advanced analytics solutions tailored for big data environments. It is renowned for its scalability and flexibility, enabling data-driven decisions.

Starburst Galaxy provides an efficient platform for conducting complex data analysis across multiple datasets. Its architecture facilitates seamless integration with existing data infrastructure, allowing organizations to harness the value of their data efficiently. Users appreciate its ability to perform intricate queries without the need for extensive data movement, fostering a more agile approach to data management and analysis.

What features make Starburst Galaxy unique?

Advanced Query Engine: Optimizes data processing to handle complex analytics efficiently.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing data needs without compromising performance.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with existing data systems for streamlined operations.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces storage and compute costs by optimizing queries and minimizing data movement.
Improved Decision-Making: Empowers users with quick access to critical insights for strategic planning.
Enhanced Performance: Delivers faster query responses, boosting productivity and time-to-value.

Starburst Galaxy is instrumental in industries such as finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, where large-scale data analysis is crucial. Organizations in these fields implement its features to accelerate data processing and gain a competitive advantage, turning vast amounts of information into actionable insights that drive industry-specific innovations.

Starburst

Sample Customers

Zillow, Netflix, Sonos

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis vs. Starburst Galaxy

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon Kinesis vs. Starburst Galaxy

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