Amazon MSK vs Azure Stream Analytics comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.3, while Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.5% mindshare in SA, compared to Microsoft’s 8.8% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 13 Amazon MSK reviews

3,035 Views
2,974 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Azure Stream Analytics

Read 28 Azure Stream Analytics reviews

3,832 Views
3,487 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Azure Stream Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Azure Stream Analytics and Amazon MSK are products in the streaming data and analytics category. Azure Stream Analytics has the upper hand with more cost-effective solutions and easier integration with its ecosystem, whereas Amazon MSK offers superior features through its extensive Kafka support.

Features: Azure Stream Analytics is notable for its seamless integration with Azure services, offering valuable features like real-time analytics that can be sent directly to Power BI and a user-friendly interface that simplifies complex data operations. It also supports robust integration with Azure IoT hub and Blob storage. On the other hand, Amazon MSK provides strong scalability and Kafka support, making it ideal for companies that need a dependable streaming data solution. Its ability to integrate well with AWS services enhances its value, especially for companies already within the AWS ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Azure Stream Analytics could enhance its features by improving integration capabilities with non-Azure platforms, expanding its real-time analytics functionalities, and optimizing large-scale deployment performance. Amazon MSK would benefit from streamlining its initial setup, providing better step-by-step deployment guides, and improving cost-effectiveness for smaller workloads.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Stream Analytics is known for its straightforward setup and excellent customer service, ensuring prompt and accessible support. Amazon MSK, while offering efficient customer service, involves a more complex deployment process that could be simplified.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Stream Analytics is cost-effective, providing a high ROI for businesses with its competitive pricing structure. Amazon MSK entails a higher setup cost but justifies this with robust long-term features and scalability, making it worth the investment for substantial data streaming requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon MSK vs. Azure Stream Analytics Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Azure Stream Analytics

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 866,218 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

4.5

Amazon MSK offers quick innovation and cost savings with flexible usage, despite potential 60% increased costs compared to Confluent.

Sentiment score

6.1

Azure Stream Analytics offers quick, cost-effective deployment, resulting in positive ROI and customer satisfaction for non-complex scenarios.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.2

Amazon MSK support is generally helpful with some knowledge decline, and satisfaction varies based on the support plan.

Sentiment score

6.5

Azure Stream Analytics support is effective and responsive, with service quality varying by subscription and occasional communication challenges.

They can manage most of our queries, and for what they cannot manage, they guide us through the process of finding out.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

Amazon's support is excellent.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

There is a big communication gap due to lack of understanding of local scenarios and language barriers.

Kay Li

PU Head of Manufacturing Industry at Wiadvance Technology Co

They've managed to answer all my questions and provide help in a timely manner.

Sarath Boppudi

Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at BiTQ

The support on critical issues depends on the level of subscription that you have with Microsoft itself.

Mahmoud Abukhamseh

DevSecOps Manager at APGecommerce

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.4

Amazon MSK is highly scalable with some manual adjustments needed; users praise its integration with AWS serverless options.

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.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

As a B2B enterprise client, our clientele consists of large ticket clients but low amounts of users.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

Maintenance requires a couple of people, however, it's not a full-time endeavor.

SantiagoCordero

Director, Governance & Infrastructure & Director at VASS

Azure Stream Analytics is scalable, and I would rate it seven out of ten.

Kay Li

PU Head of Manufacturing Industry at Wiadvance Technology Co

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.3

Amazon MSK is highly reliable with 99.9% availability, though some users face compatibility issues with older server versions.

Sentiment score

6.5

Azure Stream Analytics is reliable but can face downtime, bugs, transformation challenges, and requires tuning for optimal stability.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

They require significant effort and fine-tuning to function effectively.

SantiagoCordero

Director, Governance & Infrastructure & Director at VASS

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Room For Improvement

Amazon MSK needs easier integration, better schema support, simpler setup, reduced costs, and improved scalability and documentation.

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.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

A cost comparison between products is also not straightforward.

SantiagoCordero

Director, Governance & Infrastructure & Director at VASS

There's setup time required to get it integrated with different services such as Power BI, so it's not a straight out-of-the-box configuration.

Sarath Boppudi

Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at BiTQ

There is a lack of technical support from Microsoft's local office, particularly in Taiwan.

Kay Li

PU Head of Manufacturing Industry at Wiadvance Technology Co

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Setup Cost

Amazon MSK pricing is generally lower than competitors but can match them at enterprise scale with increased usage costs.

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%.

ParsuramPanigrahi

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.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

From my point of view, it should be cheaper now, considering the years since its release.

SantiagoCordero

Director, Governance & Infrastructure & Director at VASS

We sell the data analytics value and operational value to customers, focusing on productivity and efficiency from the cloud.

Kay Li

PU Head of Manufacturing Industry at Wiadvance Technology Co

Regarding the cost of Azure Stream Analytics, I believe the price is reasonable for the tool.

Sarath Boppudi

Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at BiTQ

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Valuable Features

Amazon MSK offers seamless AWS integration, cost efficiency, easy deployment, scalability, stability, and enhances analytics and data handling capabilities.

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.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

The best features of Amazon MSK are the real-time analytics that are excellent.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

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.

Sarath Boppudi

Data Strategist, Cloud Solutions Architect at BiTQ

It is quite easy for my technicians to understand, and the learning curve is not steep.

SantiagoCordero

Director, Governance & Infrastructure & Director at VASS

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.

Kay Li

PU Head of Manufacturing Industry at Wiadvance Technology Co

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Stream Analytics report

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

6th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Azure Stream Analytics

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 6.5%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Stream Analytics is 8.8%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Stream Analytics	8.8%
Amazon MSK	6.5%
Other	84.7%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

SYED SHAAZ

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.

Read full review

SantiagoCordero

Director, Governance & Infrastructure & Director at VASS

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

22%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	16

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?

I'm not sure exactly what benefit we have because we are using multiple AWS tools. We have AWS DMS, which is also the same as Amazon MSK, and we have Fivetran, which is a third-party website provid...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?

We are currently using Amazon MSK to transfer data from our PostgreSQL database to our DynamoDB, acting as a mediator between those two databases for migration purposes. Our data is in an on-premis...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stream Analytics?

The solution does not need any license; it comes with your subscription.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Stream Analytics?

It does not always give you the right reason or the correct reason. For example, if a service is stopped, it just tells you that it stopped and started. It does not give you any good insight as to ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 18% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 14% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Amazon MSK

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Pulsar vs Amazon MSK

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon MSK Competitors

Databricks vs Azure Stream Analytics

Compared 22% of the time

Apache Flink vs Azure Stream Analytics

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Azure Stream Analytics

Compared 16% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Azure Stream Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

Aiven Platform vs Azure Stream Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Stream Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

August 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure Stream Analytics

August 2025

Download Azure Stream Analytics product report

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

ASA

Overview

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is a fully managed service that enables you to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka to process streaming data. Amazon MSK provides the control-plane operations, such as those for creating, updating, and deleting clusters.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure Stream Analytics is a robust real-time analytics service that has been designed for critical business workloads. Users are able to build an end-to-end serverless streaming pipeline in minutes. Utilizing SQL, users are able to go from zero to production with a few clicks, all easily extensible with unique code and automatic machine learning abilities for the most advanced scenarios.

Azure Stream Analytics has the ability to analyze and accurately process exorbitant volumes of high-speed streaming data from numerous sources at the same time. Patterns and scenarios are quickly identified and information is gathered from various input sources, such as social media feeds, applications, clickstreams, sensors, and devices. These patterns can then be implemented to trigger actions and launch workflows, such as feeding data to a reporting tool, storing data for later use, or creating alerts. Azure Stream Analytics is also offered on Azure IoT Edge runtime, so the data can be processed on IoT devices.

Top Benefits

User friendly: Azure Stream Analytics is very straightforward and easy to use. Out of the box and with a few clicks, users are able to connect to numerous sources and sinks, and easily develop an end-to-end pipeline. Stream Analytics can easily connect to Azure IoT Hub and Azure Event Hub for streaming ingestion, in addition to connecting with Azure Blob storage for historical data ingestion.
Flexible deployment: For low-latency analytics, Azure Stream Analytics can run on Azure Stack or IoT edge. For large-scale analytics, the solution can run in the cloud. Azure Stream Analytics uses the same query language and tools for both the cloud and the edge, facilitating an easier process for developers to design exceptional hybrid architectures for streaming processes.
Cost-effective: With Azure Stream Analytics, users only pay for the streaming units they consume; there are no upfront costs. Users can easily scale up or down as needed; there is no commitment or cluster provisioning.
Trustworthy: Azure Stream Analytics guarantees event processing to be 99.99% available with a minute level of granularity. Azure Stream Analytics has embedded recovery capabilities and checkpoints to keep things running smoothly at all times. Events are never lost with Azure Stream Analytics at-least once delivery of events and exactly one event processing.

Reviews from Real Users

“Azure Stream Analytics is something that you can use to test out streaming scenarios very quickly in the general sense and it is useful for IoT scenarios. If I was to do a project with IoT and I needed a streaming solution, Azure Stream Analytics would be a top choice. The most valuable features of Azure Stream Analytics are the ease of provisioning and the interface is not terribly complex.” - Olubisi A., Team Lead at a tech services company.

“It's used primarily for data and mining - everything from the telemetry data side of things. It's great for streaming and makes everything easy to handle. The streaming from the IoT hub and the messaging are aspects I like a lot.” - Sudhendra U., Technical Architect at Infosys

Microsoft

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Azure Stream Analytics

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. Azure Stream Analytics

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