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Apache Kafka vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
17th
Average Rating
9.8
Reviews Sentiment
1.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 3.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.2%, up from 1.2% 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…
Stephen-Howard - PeerSpot reviewer
Federated querying delivers integrated data at record speed and reduces processing time
The biggest win has been the ability to combine data from multiple sources and deliver it to the business at record speed. This capability has allowed us to query directly through Starburst Galaxy, enabling teams to access integrated data that would otherwise be hard to pull together. This has reduced both our ETL processing time and storage costs. We are answering questions that would have been hard, if not impossible, to answer previously because the data came from disparate, disconnected sources.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing."
"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."
"The most important feature for me is the guaranteed delivery of messages from producers to consumers."
"The stream processing is a very valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"Apache Kafka is actually a distributed commit log. That is different than most messaging and queuing systems before it."
"The most valuable features are the stream API, consumer groups, and the way that the scaling takes place."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is Kafka Connect."
"It's an open-source product, which means it doesn't cost us anything to use it."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
 

Cons

"There are some latency problems with Kafka."
"They need to have a proper portal to do everything because, at this moment, Kafka is lagging in this regard."
"One complexity that I faced with the tool stems from the fact that since it is not kind of a stand-alone application, it won't integrate with native cloud, like AWS or Azure."
"The price for the enterprise version is quite high. It would be better to have a lower price."
"Kafka is a nightmare to administer."
"The UI used to access Kafka topics can be further improved."
"Kafka 2.0 has been released for over a month, and I wanted to try out the new features. However, the configuration is a little bit complicated: Kafka Broker, Kafka Manager, ZooKeeper Servers, etc."
"Apache Kafka can improve by adding a feature out of the box which allows it to deliver only one message."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Apache Kafka is free."
"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."
"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."
"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"It is open source software."
"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
You pay for cluster uptime. It is important to be aggressive about autoscaling, as a single worker will get you a long way. I recommend never connecting a BI tool to your Galaxy cluster. Instead, w...
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
As a hosted option, I wish I had more control over the cluster configuration, specifically regarding some of the more advanced options. Trino is extremely flexible and powerful, but some of this fu...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources. It is surprisingly useful to query SQL Server, a Google Sh...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
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Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.