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Amazon MSK vs Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.1
Amazon MSK saves time and money, promotes innovation with flexible pricing, yet some users find costs hard to justify.
Sentiment score
4.7
Confluent Cloud's Kafka offers cost-effective scalability and reliability, enhancing data processing and schema management despite higher costs.
Returns depend on the application you deploy and the amount of benefits you are getting, which depends on how many applications you are deploying, what are the sorts of applications, and what are the requirements.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Amazon MSK support varies; some praise its effectiveness, while others note average service and seek external assistance.
Sentiment score
6.8
Apache Kafka support on Confluent Cloud is praised for timely and competent assistance, with high user satisfaction ratings.
They can manage most of our queries, and for what they cannot manage, they guide us through the process of finding out.
Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI
Amazon's support is excellent.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
I was getting prompt responses, and it was nicely handled regarding the support.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would rate them eight if 10 was the best and one was the worst.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Amazon MSK is viewed as scalable, manageable, appealing to various environments, but may require manual scaling adjustments.
Sentiment score
5.8
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is scalable and flexible, though some users report reliability issues when scaling.
The functionality for scaling comes out of the box and is very effective.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
As a B2B enterprise client, our clientele consists of large ticket clients but low amounts of users.
Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI
According to me, it is quite scalable in terms of all the data it can handle and stream.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon MSK is stable with high ratings; minor issues are unrelated to MSK, maintaining success rates of 91% under load.
Sentiment score
6.0
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is stable and reliable, with occasional issues in high traffic and dashboard access.
It doesn't require any maintenance on my end yet, as I haven't had any issues.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon MSK struggles with integration, configuration complexities, high costs, and operational challenges compared to services like Kinesis.
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud needs improvements in integrations, user interface, cost, monitoring, and configuration for enhanced functionality.
The increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations.
Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI
I had to remove and drop all the clusters and recreate them again, which is complicated in a production environment.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
If it were easier to configure clusters and had more straightforward configuration, high-level API abstraction in the APIs could improve it.
Partner at SouJava
Regarding additional improvements, I would say probably around error handling, where when we encounter errors specific to our response structures and everything, or the tables or anything of that nature, it would be better if we were prompted with better error handling mechanisms.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Observability and monitoring are areas that could be enhanced.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon MSK is competitively priced with variable costs, appealing to enterprise users but potentially expensive for some.
Enterprise users of Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud find pricing accessible but warn of potential cost surges with added features.
Once we started using Kafka, our cloud costs rose by 50% to 60%.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
We use Kafka M5 Large instance, and depending on the instances, that is the cost we have, along with storage cost and data transfer costs.
Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI
I thought Confluent would stop me when I crossed the credits, but it did not, and then I got charged.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon MSK integrates AWS services, offering cost-effective, automated scaling, ease of use, real-time analytics, encryption, and event sourcing.
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud enables scalable, efficient real-time data processing with seamless platform integration and advanced management features.
The scalability and usability are quite remarkable.
CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited
The best features of Amazon MSK are the real-time analytics that are excellent.
Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI
Amazon MSK is basically Kafka in the cloud, and when you need to create a cluster of Kafka brokers, Amazon MSK helps with that by automatically creating all the brokers according to the configuration you provide.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
These features are important due to scalability and resiliency.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The Kafka Streams API helps with real-time data transformations and aggregations.
Partner at SouJava
The best features Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud offers would be the connection with various external systems through various languages such as Python and C#.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Kafka on Confluent C...
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 5.1%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon MSK5.1%
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud0.5%
Other94.4%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

SYED SHAAZ - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI
Improved data streaming and integration challenges prompt search for alternatives
The integration capabilities of Amazon MSK are not very flexible. If you have your own self-managed Kafka, that helps significantly because you can set up configurations. We are considering self-managed Kafka since our product is only one year old. The Kafka integrations are fine, but the configurations are an issue. The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations. There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case. The product could improve by allowing us to set different configurations. I would also like to see Amazon MSK improve in the area of connectors. We are considering Confluent Cloud because they have many more connectors. They have KSQL DB and governance features. It is slightly costlier, but Confluent offers more flexibility with their connectors.
AF
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has unified log streams from multiple systems and accelerated issue tracking through streamlined setup
I think Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud can be improved by probably working more around Confluent or the tool. In my opinion, it should utilize the response structures in a better way or be able to detect if there is any variable or if there is any data structure that is mismatched, as it would be easier than us manually having to put in the exact name in order for it to match the response. Regarding additional improvements, I would say probably around error handling, where when we encounter errors specific to our response structures and everything, or the tables or anything of that nature, it would be better if we were prompted with better error handling mechanisms. I do not think there are any other improvements Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud needs, aside from error handling and response structures.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?
The integration capabilities of Amazon MSK are not very flexible. If you have your own self-managed Kafka, that helps significantly because you can set up configurations. We are considering self-ma...
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
We are recently working with Amazon MSK at Fortis, where we have multiple dashboards in our revenue intelligence platform. We are streaming data from different apps into those dashboards. The data ...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon MSK?
We are working with Amazon MSK product, Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka. The main benefits I have seen from using Amazon MSK is that as a B2B enterprise client, we have many SLAs to fulfill. Tra...
What needs improvement with Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
I think Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud can be improved by probably working more around Confluent or the tool. In my opinion, it should utilize the response structures in a better way or be able to...
What is your primary use case for Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
I have used Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud for one of my projects with regard to log monitoring. My main use case for Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud in that project was mainly streaming of the lo...
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
My advice to others looking into using Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is that it is easier and has a low learning curve. If there is any use case regarding streaming, I would suggest starting off ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MSK vs. Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.