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Apache Kafka vs Confluent 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
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 4.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Confluent is 6.6%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Kafka4.0%
Confluent6.6%
Other89.4%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Bruno da Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Timestamp, SA
Have worked closely with the team to deploy streaming and transaction pipelines in a flexible cloud environment
The interface of Apache Kafka could be significantly better. I started working with Apache Kafka from its early days, and I have seen many improvements. The back office functionality could be enhanced. Scaling up continues to be a challenge, though it is much easier now than it was in the beginning.
PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo
Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature for me is the guaranteed delivery of messages from producers to consumers."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is Kafka Connect."
"There are numerous possibilities that can be explored. While it may be challenging to fully comprehend the potential advantages, one key aspect is the ability to establish a proper sequence of events rather than simply dealing with a jumbled group of occurrences. These events possess their own timestamps, even if they were not initially provided with one, and are arranged in a chronological order that allows for a clear understanding of the progression of the events."
"The most valuable feature is the documentation, which is good and clear."
"Apache Kafka is actually a distributed commit log. That is different than most messaging and queuing systems before it."
"It is easy to configure."
"The convenience in setting up after major problems like data center blackouts is a notable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is its versatility. It can solve many use cases or can be a part of many use cases. Its fundamental value of it is in the real-time processing capability."
"Some of the best features are that it's very quick to set up, very easy to have a centralized area that gives us a history of changes, and the ability to give feedback on any information placed onto the pages."
"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"The benefit is escaping email communication. Sometimes people ignore emails or put them into spam, but with Confluence, everyone sees the same text at the same time."
"Confluent is an amazing tool that is highly configurable, integrates very well with Jira, and lets you create nice documentation for various products while also supporting reporting and online content hosting."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided; they're leading the market in this category."
 

Cons

"The repository isn't working very well. It's not user friendly."
"I would like to see an improvement in authentication management."
"We cannot apply all of our security requirements because it is hard to upload them."
"Due to the fact that the solution is open source, it has a zookeeper dependency."
"The solution could always add a few more features to enhance its usage."
"We haven't seen a return on investment with Apache Kafka. It's used for a specific use case rather than cost reduction."
"They need to have a proper portal to do everything because, at this moment, Kafka is lagging in this regard."
"I would like to see monitoring service tools."
"There is a limitation when it comes to seamlessly importing Microsoft documents into Confluent pages, which can be inconvenient for users who frequently work with Microsoft Office tools and need to transition their content to Confluent."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box."
"The Schema Registry service could be improved. I would like a bigger knowledge base of other use cases and more technical forums. It would be good to have more flexible monitoring features added to the next release as well."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"It could have more themes. The themes in the version I'm using are very limited; they offer two to three themes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"I was using the product's free version."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution and there are no fees, but there are fees associated with confluence, which are based on subscription."
"The solution is open source; it's free to use."
"The price for the enterprise version is quite high. For on-premise, there is an annual fee, which starts at 60,000 euros, but it is usually higher than 100,000 euros. The cost for a project including the subscription is usually between 100,000 to 200,000 euros. The cost also depends on the level of support. There are two different levels of support."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
 

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 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 needs improvement with Apache Kafka?
The long-term data storage feature in Apache Kafka depends on the setting, but I believe the maximum duration is seven days.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about ...
What is your primary use case for Confluent?
The main use cases for Confluent are log aggregation and streaming. I'm familiar with Confluent stream processing with KSQL. KSQL helps in terms of data analytics strategies because if we are the d...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.