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 7.2, while Starburst is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.9% mindshare in SA, compared to Starburst’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% 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 14 Amazon MSK reviews

2,530 Views
2,479 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Starburst Enterprise

Read 2 Starburst Enterprise reviews

1,322 Views
793 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Starburst Enterprise

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Starburst Enterprise

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

Starburst Enterprise

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

16th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Science Platforms (13th)

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 Starburst Enterprise is 3.7%, up from 2.1% 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%
Starburst Enterprise	3.7%
Other	90.4%

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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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.

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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

"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."

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

"What I appreciate most about Amazon MSK is that it doesn't require extensive concern about the configurations; it starts checking how the brokers are functioning, and automatically, Amazon MSK tries to resolve all the problems."

"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 most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration."

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

"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."

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

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

"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."

"It should be more flexible, integration-wise."

"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."

"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."

"We need to create connectors in Amazon MSK, but there are no default connectors in AWS for that purpose."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

41%

Computer Software Company

Government

Retailer

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 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 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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Databricks vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 44% of the time

Starburst Galaxy vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 14% of the time

Dremio vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 13% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 7% of the time

Alteryx vs Starburst Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Data Science Platforms

September 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

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. Starburst Enterprise

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