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Apache Kafka vs Upsolver 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
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Upsolver
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (37th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 3.8%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Upsolver is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka3.8%
Upsolver0.7%
Other95.5%
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.
reviewer2784462 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streaming pipelines have become simpler and onboarding new data sources is now much faster
One of the best features Upsolver offers is the automatic schema evolution. Another good feature is SQL-based streaming transformations. Complex streaming transformations such as cleansing, deduplication, and enrichment were implemented using SQL and drastically reduced the need for custom Spark code. My experience with the SQL-based streaming transformations in Upsolver is that it had a significant positive impact on the overall data engineering workflow. By replacing custom Spark streaming jobs with declarative SQL logic, I simplified development, review, and deployment processes. Data transformations such as parsing, filtering, enrichment, and deduplication could be implemented and modified quickly without rebuilding or redeploying complex code-based pipelines. Upsolver has impacted my organization positively because it brings many benefits. The first one is faster onboarding of new data sources. Another one is more reliable streaming pipelines. Another one is near-real-time data availability, which is very important for us. It also reduced operational effort for data engineering teams. A specific outcome that highlights these benefits is that the time to onboard new sources is reduced from weeks to days. Custom Spark code reduction reached 50 to 40 percent. Pipeline failures are reduced by 70 to 80 percent. Data latency is improved from hours to minutes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As a software developer, I have found Apache Kafka's support to be the most valuable...The solution is easy to integrate with any of our systems."
"valuable features relate to microservices architecture and working on KStream and KSQL DB as a microservices event bus."
"Kafka is scalable. It can manage a high volume of data from many sources."
"Apache Kafka is very fast and stable."
"The most valuable feature is the support for a high volume of data."
"Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming."
"With Kafka, events and streaming are persistent, and multiple subscribers can consume the data. This is an advantage of Kafka compared to simple queue-based solutions."
"Apache Kafka has good integration capabilities and has plenty of adapters in its ecosystem if you want to build something. There are adapters for many platforms, such as Java, Azure, and Microsoft's ecosystem. Other solutions, such as Pulsar have fewer adapters available."
"Customer service is excellent, and I would rate it between eight point five to nine out of ten."
"The most prominent feature of Upsolver is its function as an ETL tool, allowing data to be moved across platforms and different data technologies."
"A specific outcome that highlights these benefits is that the time to onboard new sources is reduced from weeks to days, custom Spark code reduction reached 50 to 40 percent, pipeline failures are reduced by 70 to 80 percent, and data latency is improved from hours to minutes."
"It was easy to use and set up, with a nearly no-code interface that relied mostly on drag-and-drop functionality."
 

Cons

"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."
"Too much dependency on the zookeeper and leader selection is still the bottleneck for Kafka implementation."
"I would like to see an improvement in authentication management."
"Data pulling and restart ability need improving."
"The UI used to access Kafka topics can be further improved."
"Some vendors don't offer extra features for monitoring."
"It's not possible to substitute IBM MQ with Apache Kafka because the JMS part is not very stable."
"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."
"I think that Upsolver can be improved in orchestration because it is not a full orchestration tool."
"Upsolver excels in ETL and data aggregation, while ThoughtSpot is strong in natural language processing for querying datasets. Combining these tools can be very effective: Upsolver handles aggregation and ETL, and ThoughtSpot allows for natural language queries. There’s potential for highlighting these integrations in the future."
"There is room for improvement in query tuning."
"On the stability side, I would rate it seven out of ten. Using multiple cloud providers and data engineering technologies creates complexity, and managing different plugins is not always easy, but they are working on it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"The solution is free, it is open-source."
"This is an open-source version."
"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."
"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."
"The price of the solution is low."
"Upsolver is affordable at approximately $225 per terabyte per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise49
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Upsolver?
Upsolver is affordable at approximately $225 per terabyte per year. Compared to what I know from others, it's cheaper than many other products.
What needs improvement with Upsolver?
There is room for improvement in query tuning. Upsolver could do a more in-depth analysis in employing machine power, such as CPU and memory, to enhance query performance. Furthermore, allocating C...
What is your primary use case for Upsolver?
I am working as a consultant and currently have my own consultancy services. I provide services to companies that are data-heavy and looking for data engineering solutions for their business needs....
 

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. Upsolver and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.