Apache Kafka vs Red Hat AMQ vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions comparison

The compared Apache and Red Hat solutions aren't in the same category. Apache is ranked #7 in SA , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 4.2% mindshare in the category. Red Hat is ranked #6 in MQ , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 8.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Apache Kafka

Read 90 Apache Kafka reviews

4,467 Views
1,340 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Red Hat AMQ

Read 10 Red Hat AMQ reviews

1,982 Views
1,427 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Read 85 VMware Tanzu Data Solutions reviews

4,732 Views
1,467 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Apache Kafka

Red Hat AMQ

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Apache Kafka, Red Hat AMQ, and VMware Tanzu Data Solutions based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

March 2026

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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:

Mindshare comparison

Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Apache Kafka	4.2%
Apache Flink	10.9%
Databricks	9.0%
Other	75.9%

Streaming Analytics

Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Red Hat AMQ	8.4%
IBM MQ	22.7%
ActiveMQ	22.0%
Other	46.9%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions	4.0%
Snowflake	10.2%
Teradata	9.0%
Other	76.8%

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Bruno da Silva

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.

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SachinJain

Senior Technical Specialist at Intuitive Technology Partners

Efficiently manages high availability and fault tolerance for critical systems with user-friendly management features

I have experience with features such as message persistence and fault tolerance because I configured high availability and fault tolerance for the client environment, including active-active and active-passive configurations. I mainly prefer active-active. I created a security feature for user authentication and authorization in Red Hat AMQ using vault. When you enable the vault, then your whole Red Hat AMQ becomes more secure. Management is straightforward. I configured it and created documentation. The operations team takes care of the operation part. I educate them on how to manage access, so they can easily add new people who join the company or manage the people who leave. The benefits of using Red Hat AMQ include easy configuration and monitoring. On the portal, I can monitor how many packets or alerts have been generated or sent to the end user via Red Hat AMQ along with messages or emails. It also shows utilization in the tool. These features also come with other AMQs such as Amazon and IBM.

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Karthik Shivaram

Sr. Manager at STI INFOTECH PVT LTD

Improved multi-cloud data management has simplified operations and supports seamless Kubernetes

From my perspective, the biggest challenge with VMware right now is the pricing. To be very honest, in many cases I find myself recommending alternative solutions instead of VMware. Even if those alternatives come with a bit more complexity, customers are often more willing to accept that than the current VMware pricing model. In the past, VMware used a socket-based licensing model, which was easier for customers to understand and budget for. Now the shift to a core-based licensing model has significantly increased costs for many environments, especially for organizations running modern high-core CPUs. One positive aspect of the new model is that VMware has bundled several components together. For example, earlier when deploying vSphere, customers also had to purchase vCenter separately for management. Now multiple components are packaged into a single SKU, which simplifies some aspects of procurement and deployment. While this consolidation has its benefits, the overall licensing and commercial costs remain very high. Pricing is not the only issue. I believe Broadcom also needs to reconsider its strategy in light of the current market conditions. The approach they are taking may be strategic from a business perspective, but from what I see in the field, it is leading to lost opportunities. Many customers who previously relied on VMware are now actively exploring alternative virtualization platforms. I’m not sure where this direction will ultimately lead, but based on my experience, it is already affecting adoption. Since you’ve been trying to reach me for some time—and we also had a discussion a couple of years ago—I hope this feedback helps Broadcom understand the current sentiment in the market and potentially make adjustments. Another important concern is the way features are bundled. In many cases, customers only need basic virtualization and high availability capabilities. However, the current packaging often includes additional features that they may not need. A good analogy is that if a customer only needs an entry-level car, we shouldn’t be forced to sell them a Rolls-Royce. VMware could benefit from adopting a more modular or à la carte licensing model, where customers can choose only the components they truly require. For example, if a customer only needs core virtualization functionality, they should be able to purchase just that. This would allow partners and solution providers to better align solutions with customer requirements and position VMware more competitively in the market. Another challenge I want to highlight is the pricing model based on U.S. dollars and the way multi-year licensing is handled. In many enterprise and government projects, customers prefer to commit to three-year or five-year licenses and pay the full amount upfront. However, in approximately 20% of the deals I work on, we lose opportunities because VMware only provides dollar-based pricing for the first year. When it comes to the following years, the contract requires renewals annually rather than allowing a fixed multi-year upfront payment. This approach is particularly problematic for government and public sector customers. Many of them are ready and willing to pay for three or five years in advance, but the current VMware model does not support that structure effectively. Because pricing is tied to the U.S. dollar and subject to yearly adjustments, VMware does not lock in pricing for the full term. From a customer’s perspective, this introduces uncertainty and makes procurement more complicated. Ideally, if a price is quoted—for example, $100 per year—it should remain consistent across a multi-year agreement. Customers would be comfortable committing to a five-year term if the price were fixed and predictable. Unfortunately, that flexibility is currently not available across VMware products, whether it is vSphere, VMware Tanzu solutions, or other offerings. For large enterprise environments, one-year commitments are usually not practical. Many enterprise customers prefer longer-term agreements for budgeting and procurement reasons. Even when they are willing to accept the higher cost associated with the core-based licensing model, the lack of a clear multi-year upfront option often becomes a deal-breaker.

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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

"The main advantage is increased reliability, particularly with regard to data and the speed with which messages are published to the other side."

"The stability of the solution is very good, even for large enterprise-level organizations."

"Apache Kafka is very fast and stable."

"The most important feature for me is the guaranteed delivery of messages from producers to consumers."

"Kafka is scalable to any degree we want, and it has several connectors available for integration in multiple languages, making it easier for integration."

"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."

"Kafka was at the base of our system architecture."

"The valuable features are the group community and support."

More Apache Kafka pros

"Red Hat AMQ's best feature is its reliability."

"My impression is that it is average in terms of scalability."

"The self-service aspect is very important for us, and AMQ Streams has enabled us to deliver new services faster, going from days to hours."

"The benefits of using Red Hat AMQ include easy configuration and monitoring; on the portal, I can monitor how many packets or alerts have been generated or sent to the end user via Red Hat AMQ along with messages or emails, and it also shows utilization in the tool."

"The most valuable feature is stability."

"This product is well adopted on the OpenShift platform. For organizations like ours that use OpenShift for many of our products, this is a good feature."

"The most valuable feature is stability."

"AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination."

More Red Hat AMQ pros

"After we implemented Greenplum, the loads were reduced to less than nine hours."

"It's a very good product for reducing the time and man power needed for database optimization for datawarehousing purposes."

"The security is great."

"Scalable (Massive) Parallel Processing (MPP) – The ability to bring to bear large amounts of compute against large data sets with Greenplum and the EMC DCA has proven itself to be very effective."

"Append Only tables, data compression and bulk load and extraction using External Tables are very valuable features for us."

"We saved lots of money in terms of licensing."

"We are now able to leverage real time applications and event driven architecture."

"The loading speed is very good."

Cons

"The third party is not very stable and sometimes you have problems with this component."

"Kafka is complex and there is a little bit of a learning curve."

"The GUI tools for monitoring and support are still very basic and not very rich. There is no help in determining a shard key for performance."

"The UI is based on command line. It would be helpful if they could come up with a simpler user interface."

"Stability of the API and the technical support could be improved."

"The UI used to access Kafka topics can be further improved."

"Kafka is a nightmare to administer."

"There is a lot of information available for the solution and it can be overwhelming to sort through."

More Apache Kafka cons

"AMQ could be better integrated with Jira and patch management tools."

"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."

"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."

"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."

"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."

"This solution is completely unstable. We lose messages."

"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."

"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."

More Red Hat AMQ cons

"We had several de-clustering problems."

"The next release should include some of the flexibility and features that Kafka offers."

"If you're outside IP address range, the clustering no longer has all the features which is problematic."

"We had multiple issues with stability. The product tends to be highly unstable when under heavy loads."

"If you have a user consuming a huge load of resources, it takes down the entire system."

"Lacks sufficient inbuilt machine-learning functions for complex use cases."

"The availability could be better."

"When they are full, we might lose everything."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is low."

"I was using the product's free version."

"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."

"Apache Kafka has an open-source pricing."

"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution and there are no fees, but there are fees associated with confluence, which are based on subscription."

"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."

"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."

"Apache Kafka is open-source and can be used free of charge."

More Apache Kafka pricing and cost advice

"The solution is open-source."

"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."

"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."

"This is an open source solution."

"Tanzu Greenplum's pricing is really competitive and gives excellent value for money."

"We are using the open-source version of this solution."

"Since the tool is an open-source product, there is no need to pay anything."

"It’s an open-source solution."

"The pricing for RabbitMQ is reasonable. It is worth the cost."

"are using the open-source version, which can be used free of cost."

"It is an open-source platform. Although, we have to pay for additional features."

More VMware Tanzu Data Solutions pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

20%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	49

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	49

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...

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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.

See all answers

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 seve...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?

The areas for improvement include cost, which is a primary concern. The deployment process is simple, but the cost is...

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What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?

For use cases for Red Hat AMQ, let's take banking purposes. This depends upon the firm or the service or product comp...

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What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat AMQ?

I work primarily with Red Hat. For IBM, I have worked with their channel partner, not directly with IBM. For Amazon, ...

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How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?

IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, si...

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What do you like most about VMware RabbitMQ?

RabbitMQ provides access to SDKs for development and the ability to raise and log tickets if we encounter issues. We ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware RabbitMQ?

The product is free of cost.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 12% of the time

IBM MQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 8% of the time

Apache Pulsar vs Apache Kafka

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka

Compared 4% of the time

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ActiveMQ vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 22% of the time

IBM MQ vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Event Streams vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon SQS vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 5% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat AMQ Competitors

Oracle Exadata vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Database Service vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Compared 5% of the time

IBM MQ vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Compared 5% of the time

Snowflake vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Compared 4% of the time

StormMQ vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Data Solutions Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apache Kafka

March 2026

Download Apache Kafka product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat AMQ

March 2026

Download Red Hat AMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions

March 2026

Download VMware Tanzu Data Solutions product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ

Greenplum, Pivotal Greenplum, VMware RabbitMQ, VMware Tanzu GemFire, VMware Postgres

Overview

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed streaming platform that serves as a central hub for handling real-time data streams. It allows efficient publishing, subscribing, and processing of data from various sources like applications, servers, and sensors.

Kafka's core benefits include high scalability for big data pipelines, fault tolerance ensuring continuous operation despite node failures, low latency for real-time applications, and decoupling of data producers from consumers.

Key features include topics for organizing data streams, producers for publishing data, consumers for subscribing to data, brokers for managing clusters, and connectors for easy integration with various data sources.

Large organizations use Kafka for real-time analytics, log aggregation, fraud detection, IoT data processing, and facilitating communication between microservices.

Apache

To respond to business demands quickly and efficiently, you need a way to integrate the applications and data spread across your enterprise. Red Hat JBoss A-MQ—based on the Apache ActiveMQ open source project—is a flexible, high-performance messaging platform that delivers information reliably, enabling real-time integration and connecting the Internet of Things (IoT).

Red Hat

VMware Tanzu is a robust platform tailored for data warehousing, complex analytics, BI applications, and predictive analytics. It excels in scalability, performance, and parallel processing, enhancing data handling efficiency. Users report significant productivity improvements and streamlined operations, making it ideal for comprehensive data solutions.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest

E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings

General Electric, Conversant, China CITIC Bank, Aridhia, Purdue University

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