Amazon MSK vs Starburst Enterprise comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Starburst are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.3, while Starburst is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.5% mindshare in SA, compared to Starburst’s 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Starburst users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 12 Amazon MSK reviews

3,035 Views
2,974 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Starburst Enterprise

Read 2 Starburst Enterprise reviews

1,367 Views
793 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Starburst Enterprise

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Amazon MSK and Starburst Enterprise are prominent in data streaming and query solutions. Amazon MSK is often favored for its integration within the AWS ecosystem, while Starburst Enterprise stands out for its advanced feature set, making it appealing for complex data needs.

Features: Amazon MSK integrates seamlessly with AWS services, offering robust Apache Kafka management and ease of use for streaming workloads. Starburst Enterprise supports extensive SQL, queries across diverse data sources, and provides sophisticated analytics capabilities, making it ideal for complex environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon MSK offers a managed Kafka experience with straightforward deployment and scalability within AWS, along with comprehensive support tailored for AWS users. Starburst Enterprise's deployment can be complex but offers powerful data query capabilities with a customizable setup and in-depth support to manage its intricacies.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon MSK's pay-as-you-go pricing is competitive, aligning with organizational needs and offering favorable ROI, particularly for those leveraging AWS. Starburst Enterprise involves a higher initial setup cost, justified by its extensive features and data querying capabilities, providing strong ROI for enterprises with complex analytic requirements.

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Starburst Enterprise

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

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Starburst Enterprise

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

15th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Science Platforms (12th)

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 Starburst Enterprise is 3.6%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

FNU AKSHANSH

Senior Data Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

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.

Read full review

KamleshPant

Senior Software Architect at USEReady

Connects to any data source from any region and offers unified access

There are no specific projects supported by Starburst regarding AI initiatives or machine learning projects. In the future, if we have all the data available, we can definitely capitalize on AI/ML and LLM capabilities to summarize data and gain insights. That's our future goal, but we haven't reached that point yet. There should be support for REST API data sources to access data from the web. We often have data coming in and communicate with data sources via REST API calls. I don't see that capability in Starburst currently; everything is through JDBC or ODBC. If Starburst could seamlessly access data using REST API capabilities, it would be a game-changer. The self-service data management features, like self-service materialized views, are great, but they can be a bit complex for basic users to understand.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."

"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"

"The scalability and usability are quite remarkable."

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

"It provides installations, scaling, and other functionalities straight out of the box."

"It is a stable product."

"It offers good stability."

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

More Amazon MSK pros

"We have noticed improvements in performance using Starburst Enterprise. It handles complex data, including reading and partitioning files. We can add a new catalog to Starburst Enterprise by providing connection details and service account information. This allows us to integrate with existing tools, such as the Snowflake database, which we use for data protection in our project."

"It's very scalable, fast performing, and supports many catalogs."

Cons

"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."

"Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence."

"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 should be more flexible, integration-wise."

"One of the reasons why we prefer Kafka is because the support is a little bit difficult to manage with Amazon MSK."

"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."

More Amazon MSK cons

"Starburst Enterprise could improve by offering additional features similar to those provided by other SQL query tools. For example, incorporating functionalities like pivot tables would make it more feasible to use."

"There should be support for REST API data sources to access data from the web."

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."

"I haven't personally dealt with the pricing aspects first-hand, but from what I understand, it largely depends on the specifics of your setup, especially the machines you use on AWS. The cost of using Starburst Enterprise can vary based on the amount of data you're processing and the type of machines you opt for, whether on AWS or another cloud platform."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

43%

Computer Software Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Government

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.

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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Enterprise?

I haven't personally dealt with the pricing aspects first-hand, but from what I understand, it largely depends on the specifics of your setup, especially the machines you use on AWS. The cost of us...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Starburst Enterprise?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Starburst Enterprise?

We use Starburst with one client who is exploring their ecosystem to remove data silos and enable data access across departments. It's a very big ecosystem, like a finance institute. They are curre...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 31% of the time

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

More Amazon MSK Competitors

Databricks vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 42% of the time

Starburst Galaxy vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 14% of the time

Dremio vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 13% of the time

Alteryx vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 6% of the time

More Starburst Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

August 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Science Platforms

August 2025

Download Starburst Enterprise 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)

Starburst Enterprise is a data analytics platform that enables organizations to access and analyze data from multiple sources, including cloud-based and on-premises data warehouses. It provides a single access point to all data sources, allowing users to query and analyze data without moving it between systems.

By providing a unified view, Starburst Enterprise helps organizations make better-informed decisions and improve operational efficiency, leading to better customer insights and more accurate forecasting. Overall, Starburst Enterprise is a powerful tool for organizations looking to unlock the full potential of their data.

Starburst

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Starburst Enterprise

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. Starburst Enterprise

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