Amazon MSK vs IBM Streams comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.1, while IBM is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.1% mindshare in SA, compared to IBM’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 14 Amazon MSK reviews

2,786 Views
2,730 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM Streams

Read 5 IBM Streams reviews

498 Views
354 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

IBM Streams

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM Streams and Amazon MSK are leading platforms in data processing, with each excelling in different aspects. Amazon MSK holds the advantage due to its comprehensive feature set and seamless AWS integration, making it a preferred choice for users seeking rich capabilities.

Features: IBM Streams offers strong real-time analytics capabilities, impressive scalability, and intricate analysis of large datasets. Amazon MSK provides seamless integration with AWS services, supports Apache Kafka, and is ideal for complex data streaming.

Room for Improvement: IBM Streams could benefit from enhanced AWS integration, additional toolkits, and broader support for data formats. Amazon MSK could improve personalization in customer service, reduce initial setup costs, and enhance deployment flexibility outside AWS environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Streams delivers an easy setup experience and personalized customer support, favored for minimal configuration. Amazon MSK offers seamless deployment within AWS, utilizing its extensive resources, yet might not match the tailored support level of IBM.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Streams is known for competitive setup costs, promising quick ROI through efficient data task processing. Amazon MSK, while more costly upfront, offers higher long-term ROI by leveraging extensive AWS integrations and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon MSK vs. IBM Streams Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. IBM Streams

July 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 MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

6th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM Streams

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

22nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 6.1%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Streams is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon MSK	6.1%
IBM Streams	1.0%
Other	92.9%

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.

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Ahmed_Emad

Territory Sales Leader at Sumerge

A solution for data pipelines but has connector limitations

We have used Kafka for seven years. IBM streams gives you many OOTB features that can boost the time-to-market, especially when it comes to reporting and monitoring for example. Confluent is recognized as one of the leaders in this space and the main reason for this is related to the complete vision of the platform also the large number of connectors. This gives the edge and competitive advatnage.

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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

25%

Computer Software Company

20%

Government

11%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	4

No data available

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.

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What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?

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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 ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Streams?

The solution’s licenses pricing is different from one region to another region. I rate the solution’s pricing a seven out of ten.

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What needs improvement with IBM Streams?

the limited number of connectors. This shall be overcome with work-arounds or eventually buying additional connectors to complete the solution.

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What is your primary use case for IBM Streams?

We use the solution for data pipeline by modernizing the traditional ETL jobs done through advanced streaming. Another use case is building the g2g streaming platform, which facilitates data exchan...

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Comparisons

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 33% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 18% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Amazon MSK

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon MSK Competitors

Apache Flink vs IBM Streams

Compared 52% of the time

Confluent vs IBM Streams

Compared 48% of the time

More IBM Streams Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

September 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

August 2025

Download IBM Streams product report

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

IBM InfoSphere Streams

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)

IBM Streams is an advanced analytic platform that allows user-developed applications to quickly ingest, analyze and correlate information as it arrives from thousands of data stream sources. The solution can handle very high data throughput rates, up to millions of events or messages per second. Streams helps you analyze data in motion, simplify development of streaming applications, and extend the value of existing systems.

IBM

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Globo TV, All England Lawn Tennis Club, CenterPoint Energy, Consolidated Communications Holdings, Darwin Ecosystem, Emory University Hospital, ICICI Securities, Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT), Living Roads, Mobileum, Optibus, Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP), University of Alberta, University of Montana, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Wimbledon 2015

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. IBM Streams

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. IBM Streams

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We monitor all Streaming Analytics reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.