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Apache Kafka vs Cloudera DataFlow 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

Apache Kafka
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudera DataFlow
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
14th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 2.8%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera DataFlow is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability
I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…
Mohamed-Saied - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data integration and workflow scheduling elevate project performance
Cloudera DataFlow is used as an ETL or ELT solution within Cloudera's data pipeline. Our organization heavily relies on it for data ingestion, transformation, and warehousing. It is also used daily for operational tasks, and it integrates well within Cloudera's ecosystem for high performance and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main advantage is increased reliability, particularly with regard to data and the speed with which messages are published to the other side."
"valuable features relate to microservices architecture and working on KStream and KSQL DB as a microservices event bus."
"Resiliency is great and also the fact that it handles different data formats."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is the clustering which is very easy to scale and we have multiple servers all over our platforms. It has been useful for stability and performance."
"The valuable features are the group community and support."
"Kafka's most valuable feature is its user-friendliness."
"The most valuable feature is the support for a high volume of data."
"I use it for real-time processing workloads. So, in some instances, it's like IoT data. We need to put it into a data lake."
"The initial setup was not so difficult"
"This solution is very scalable and robust."
"Cloudera DataFlow is fully compatible with Cloudera's ecosystem and offers high efficiency through native connectors for various ecosystems."
"DataFlow's performance is okay."
"The most effective features are data management and analytics."
 

Cons

"I would like to see monitoring service tools."
"The user interface is one weakness. Sometimes, our data isn't as accessible as we'd like. It takes a lot of work to retrieve the data and the index."
"Apache Kafka could improve data loss and compatibility with Spark."
"Kafka is complex and there is a little bit of a learning curve."
"One of the things I am mostly looking for is that once the message is picked up from Kafka, it should not be visible or able to be consumed by other applications, or something along those lines. That feature is not present, but it is not a limitation or anything of the sort; rather, it is a desirable feature. The next release should include a feature that prevents messages from being consumed by other applications once they are picked up by Kafka."
"Kafka's interface could also use some work. Some of our products are in C, and we don't have any libraries to use with C. From an interface perspective, we had a library from the readies. And we are streaming some of the products we built to readies. That is one of the requirements. It would be good to have those libraries available in a future release for our C++ clients or public libraries, so we can include them in our product and build on that."
"The product is good, but it needs implementation and on-going support. The whole cloud engagement model has made the adoption of Kafka better due to PaaS (Amazon Kinesis, a fully managed service by AWS)."
"It’s a trial-and-error process with no one-size-fits-all solution. Issues may arise until it’s appropriately tuned."
"Cloudera DataFlow's UI interface could be enhanced significantly. Memory handling can also be improved to be better than it is today."
"It's an outdated legacy product that doesn't meet the needs of modern data analysts and scientists."
"Although their workflow is pretty neat, it still requires a lot of transformation coding; especially when it comes to Python and other demanding programming languages."
"It is not easy to use the R language. Though I don't know if it's possible, I believe it is possible, but it is not the best language for machine learning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is approximately $600,000 USD."
"The price of the solution is low."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"Apache Kafka has an open-source pricing."
"I rate Apache Kafka's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing fees for Apache Kafka."
"The price of Apache Kafka is good."
"We use the free version."
"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
"DataFlow isn't expensive, but its value for money isn't great."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
University
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
What do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.
What do you like most about Cloudera DataFlow?
The most effective features are data management and analytics.
What needs improvement with Cloudera DataFlow?
Cloudera DataFlow's UI interface could be enhanced significantly. Memory handling can also be improved to be better than it is today.
What is your primary use case for Cloudera DataFlow?
Cloudera DataFlow is used as an ETL or ELT solution within Cloudera's data pipeline. Our organization heavily relies on it for data ingestion, transformation, and warehousing. It is also used daily...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CDF, Hortonworks DataFlow, HDF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Clearsense
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Cloudera DataFlow and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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