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Amazon MSK vs Azure Stream Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
5.9
Amazon MSK enhances ROI through reduced integration time, flexibility, and cost-efficient experimentation, outperforming Confluent in innovation speed.
Sentiment score
6.1
Azure Stream Analytics offers quick, cost-effective deployment, resulting in positive ROI and customer satisfaction for non-complex scenarios.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.9
Amazon MSK support is generally satisfactory with expertise, but experiences vary based on support plans and perceived decline over time.
Sentiment score
6.5
Azure Stream Analytics support is effective and responsive, with service quality varying by subscription and occasional communication challenges.
Amazon's support is excellent.
The support on critical issues depends on the level of subscription that you have with Microsoft itself.
They've managed to answer all my questions and provide help in a timely manner.
There is a big communication gap due to lack of understanding of local scenarios and language barriers.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Amazon MSK offers scalable, flexible serverless and classic options, efficiently handling user demands despite occasional manual interventions.
Sentiment score
7.5
Azure Stream Analytics is highly scalable, cloud-based, easily integrated, adaptable, and efficiently manages varying workloads, despite some cost concerns.
The functionality for scaling comes out of the box and is very effective.
Maintenance requires a couple of people, however, it's not a full-time endeavor.
Azure Stream Analytics is scalable, and I would rate it seven out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon MSK is generally seen as stable, rated 8-9/10, with 99.9% availability but limited long-term usage insights.
Sentiment score
6.5
Azure Stream Analytics is reliable but can face downtime, bugs, transformation challenges, and requires tuning for optimal stability.
They require significant effort and fine-tuning to function effectively.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon MSK struggles with integration, pricing, setup complexity, limited schema support, and lacks default connectors, complicating user experience.
Azure Stream Analytics needs better pricing, logging, customization, connectivity, integration, UI, flexibility, support, error handling, and simplified licensing.
The increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings.
Any coding challenges they face can be helped by the implementation of AI within the tool itself, such as using chatbots for assistance, automated testing, and code formatting.
A cost comparison between products is also not straightforward.
There is a lack of technical support from Microsoft's local office, particularly in Taiwan.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon MSK offers competitive pricing for large workloads, but small use cases may incur higher costs, similar to Confluent.
Azure Stream Analytics offers competitive pricing but can be costly for enterprises; users find billing reports confusing.
Once we started using Kafka, our cloud costs rose by 50% to 60%.
From my point of view, it should be cheaper now, considering the years since its release.
We sell the data analytics value and operational value to customers, focusing on productivity and efficiency from the cloud.
Regarding the cost of Azure Stream Analytics, I believe the price is reasonable for the tool.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon MSK integrates with AWS services, offering cost-effectiveness, scalability, and ease of use for data pipelines and migrations.
Azure Stream Analytics provides integrated, scalable real-time analytics with SQL queries and machine learning, enhancing data processing capabilities efficiently.
The scalability and usability are quite remarkable.
It's very accurate and uses existing technologies in terms of writing queries, utilizing standard query languages such as SQL, Spark, and others to provide information.
Clients can choose and subscribe to the service items they need, making it more flexible than IBM solutions, especially in data analytics or data governance.
The native connectors and integration with other Microsoft products.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Stream Analytics
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 6.8%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Stream Analytics is 9.2%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

FNU AKSHANSH - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's automatic
We don't have many use cases involving ingesting large amounts of data and scaling up and down. We have a clear understanding of our data volume, which remains relatively constant throughout the week. While we're aware of other features Amazon MSK offers, we feel confident in our current setup. If our requirements change significantly in the future, we'll reassess our needs and consider adopting Amazon MSK.
SantiagoCordero - PeerSpot reviewer
Native connectors and integration simplify tasks but portfolio complexity needs addressing
There are too many products in the Azure landscape, which sometimes leads to overlap between them. Microsoft continuously releases new products or solutions, which can be frustrating when determining the appropriate features from one solution over another. A cost comparison between products is also not straightforward. They should simplify their portfolio. The Microsoft licensing system is confusing and not easy to understand, and this is something they should address. In the future, I may stop using Stream Analytics and move to other solutions. I discussed Palantir earlier, which is something I want to explore in depth because it allows me to accomplish more efficiently compared to solely using Azure. Additionally, the vendors should make the solution more user-friendly, incorporating low-code and no-code features. This is something I wish to explore further.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon MSK?
Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems.
What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?
The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings. There were no other notable issues.
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
We used Amazon MSK to manage high-volume third-party data entering our system. It served as a buffer when our system was unable to consume data at high speeds in real-time. The data initially went ...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stream Analytics?
Regarding the cost of Azure Stream Analytics, I believe the price is reasonable for the tool.
What needs improvement with Azure Stream Analytics?
There were challenges with Azure Stream Analytics. When I initially started, the learning curve was difficult because I didn't have knowledge of the service. There's setup time required to get it i...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
ASA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Rockwell Automation, Milliman, Honeywell Building Solutions, Arcoflex Automation Solutions, Real Madrid C.F., Aerocrine, Ziosk, Tacoma Public Schools, P97 Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MSK vs. Azure Stream Analytics and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.