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Amazon MSK vs Redpanda 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
5th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redpanda
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Vishal M Godi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This"
"Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems."
"Amazon MSK's separation of concerns and ease of creating and deploying new features are highly valuable. It just requires to assign them to the topic, and then anyone who needs to consume these messages can do so directly from Amazon MSK. This separation of concerns makes it very convenient, especially for new feature development, as developers can easily access the messages they need without having to deal with complex server communications or protocol setups."
"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration."
"It is a stable product."
"It provides installations, scaling, and other functionalities straight out of the box."
"The solution's technical support was helpful."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
"The UI is modern."
"I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable."
"The cost savings have been significant."
 

Cons

"In my opinion, there are areas in Amazon MSK that could be improved, particularly in terms of configuration. Initially setting it up and getting it connected was quite challenging. The naming conventions for policies were updated by AWS, and some were undocumented, leading to confusion with outdated materials. It took us weeks of trial and error before discovering new methods through hidden tutorials and official documentation."
"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 should be more flexible, integration-wise."
"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."
"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."
"One of the reasons why we prefer Kafka is because the support is a little bit difficult to manage with Amazon MSK."
"The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available."
"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."
"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."
"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."
"The version control mechanism must be improved."
 

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 platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."
"The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."
"Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors."
"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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.
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

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. Redpanda and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.