Amazon MSK vs Redpanda comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Redpanda Data are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.2, while Redpanda Data is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.9% mindshare in SA, compared to Redpanda Data’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Redpanda Data users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 14 Amazon MSK reviews

2,530 Views
2,479 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Redpanda

Read 4 Redpanda reviews

397 Views
389 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Redpanda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Amazon MSK and Redpanda compete in the data streaming platform category. Redpanda is viewed as having the advantage owing to its low-latency streaming and simplicity.

Features: Amazon MSK integrates seamlessly with AWS services and provides secure data encryption and automated monitoring tools. Its design aids in separation of concerns and simplifies the deployment of new features. Redpanda's single-binary architecture enhances performance, reduces maintenance, and is compatible with Kafka APIs, ensuring flexibility and efficiency for high-throughput requirements.

Room for Improvement: Amazon MSK's reliance on the AWS ecosystem may require better onboarding for users unfamiliar with AWS. The simplification of pricing structures could help users project costs more accurately. Improvement in user interface intuitiveness would enhance user satisfaction. Redpanda could boost its community support network further and expand its documentation for more diverse use cases. It could benefit from more extensive enterprise-level support options. Ensuring smoother integrations with other platforms beyond Kafka-compatible solutions would widen its adoption.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon MSK offers streamlined deployment through the AWS Console, benefitting from AWS's scalability, though requiring familiarity with the AWS environment. It provides extensive documentation and support tracks. Redpanda allows rapid on-premise deployment with an easy setup, focusing on hands-on customer service. Its direct technical support is appealing for developers emphasizing personalized assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon MSK utilizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model aligned with AWS's cost structures, ideal for businesses heavily integrated within AWS. However, cost management can become complex with heavy AWS usage. Redpanda is priced competitively to reduce latency and operational costs, offering a favorable ROI for efficient streaming. Its pricing model caters to businesses focusing on cost-effective performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda

September 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

Redpanda

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

18th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 5.9%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon MSK	5.9%
Redpanda	1.4%
Other	92.7%

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.

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Vishal M Godi

Big Data Teaching Assistant at Center for Cloud Computing and Big Data, PES University

High-performance message brokering with excellent documentation and an easy setup

The industry standard for this kind of platform is Kafka. Confluent Kafka has acquired it. Kafka is an open-source platform built by Apache. Confluent is the commercial version of it. The major improvement of Redpanda over Kafka is firstly, good documentation. Redpanda's documentation is very easily understandable, and they have a lot of examples. In addition to that, most of the setups include using another technology called Docker, which I am very familiar with. Setting up technologies using Docker is very convenient to me, and Redpanda has provided many templates for that. Redpanda has its own built-in metrics exporter, making it easier to monitor and check performance. What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications.

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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

"MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature."

"The scalability and usability are quite remarkable."

"Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow."

"It is a stable product."

"Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems."

"Amazon MSK has contributed positively to our real-time analytics capabilities because Fortis's dashboards have dashboard health that needs to be maintained, user logs that need to be maintained, and usage tracking."

"The solution's technical support was helpful."

More Amazon MSK pros

"I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable."

"The UI is modern."

"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."

"The cost savings have been significant."

Cons

"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 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."

"The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available."

"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The product's schema support needs enhancement. It will help enhance integration with many kinds of languages of programming languages, especially for environments using languages like .NET."

"It does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster."

"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."

"It would be really helpful if Amazon MSK could provide a single installation that covers all the servers."

More Amazon MSK cons

"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."

"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."

"The version control mechanism must be improved."

"Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you create a complete enterprise-driven architecture that is deployable on an enterprise scale, I would say that the prices of Amazon MSK and Confluent Platform become comparable."

"The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."

"The platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."

"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."

"Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

No data available

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?

Redpanda is actually a commercial platform, but they do provide free versions as well. I've been working only with the free versions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Redpanda?

Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good. Maybe ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Redpanda?

I have worked with Redpanda for the past two to three months. Mainly in the tech industry or software industry, there's a huge rise of streaming data. Redpanda serves as a very reliable and fast me...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 34% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 17% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Pulsar vs Amazon MSK

Compared 7% of the time

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Amazon Kinesis vs Redpanda

Compared 56% of the time

Apache Pulsar vs Redpanda

Compared 29% of the time

StreamNative vs Redpanda

Compared 15% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

October 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

Redpanda

September 2025

Download Redpanda product report

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

No data available

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)

Redpanda offers a modern, intuitive interface with efficient resource usage, seamlessly integrating with Kafka, and enhancing performance through fast operations and reliable support. Organizations benefit from its memory efficiency and high performance for demanding data workloads.

Built on a C++ foundation, Redpanda integrates easily with Kafka clients and stands out for fast operations, simplified Docker setup, and effective metrics monitoring. Performance is enhanced by memory efficiency and high throughput capabilities. The community provides robust support, and clear documentation aids the adoption process. However, improvements could be made in version control, command-line tools, and documentation, particularly in areas such as automation file management and chatbot documentation assistance. Redpanda is widely utilized in data streaming and normalization, efficiently handling large telemetry data volumes with minimal latency, essential for building asynchronous applications across microservices and monitoring systems.

What are the most important features of Redpanda?

Modern UI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Efficient Resource Usage: Built on C++ for performance optimization.
Seamless Integration: Works well with Kafka clients for smooth operations.
Simplified Setup: Docker templates facilitate easy installation.
Built-in Metrics Exporters: Enhance monitoring and visibility.
High Performance: Ensures memory efficiency and quick data processing.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Fast Operations: Accelerates data processing for efficient workflows.
Reliable Support: Strong community aids troubleshooting and development.
Clear Documentation: Helps users quickly onboard and manage Redpanda.
Low Latency: Critical for applications requiring quick response times.
Sub-second Response: Supports demanding performance and latency needs.

Redpanda is commonly implemented in tech and software industries to streamline data streaming and normalization processes, handling high telemetry data volumes effectively. Its capacity for sub-second response times makes it crucial for companies developing asynchronous applications, especially in microservices and monitoring systems.

Redpanda Data

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda

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