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Apache NiFi vs IBM Streams 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 NiFi
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (5th)
IBM Streams
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Apache NiFi and IBM Streams aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Apache NiFi is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 8.2%, down 8.4% compared to last year.
IBM Streams, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 2.0% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
Compute Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache NiFi8.2%
AWS Lambda14.2%
Amazon EC213.6%
Other64.0%
Compute Service
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Streams2.0%
Apache Flink8.9%
Databricks8.1%
Other81.0%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

YV
architect with 51-200 employees
Unified data flows have simplified large-scale ingestion and have improved SLA reliability
Improvements can be made in the way of the UI. From the deployment perspective, Git configurations are available in 2.6 versions and 2.0 and later versions of Apache NiFi. Before 2.0, templates had to be created and stored in Apache NiFi Registry, which is available. However, templates still need to be imported and exported manually if moving from one environment to another environment. Even in 2.0 versions, although GitHub configurations are available, how it will function needs to be evaluated. Seamless CI/CD deployments are somewhat tricky and challenging when it comes to Apache NiFi with the proper approvals, moving that flow to another environment, and giving the proper RBAC controls. These are areas that could be improved. Documentation is adequate, but the only pain point is the deployment aspect.
Ahmed_Emad - PeerSpot reviewer
Territory Sales Leader at Sumerge
A solution for data pipelines but has connector limitations
We have used Kafka for seven years. IBM streams gives you many OOTB features that can boost the time-to-market, especially when it comes to reporting and monitoring for example. Confluent is recognized as one of the leaders in this space and the main reason for this is related to the complete vision of the platform also the large number of connectors. This gives the edge and competitive advatnage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Apache NiFi is user-friendly. Its most valuable features for handling large volumes of data include its multitude of integrated endpoints and clients and the ability to create cron jobs to run tasks at regular intervals."
"The most valuable feature has been the range of clients and the range of connectors that we could use."
"The web based UI is phenomenal in allowing an easier usage of configurations than Apache Flume."
"The ease of use in Apache NiFi has helped my team because anyone can learn how to use it in a short amount of time, so we were able to get a lot of work done."
"It is highly effective for handling real-time data by working with APIs for immediate and continuous data extraction."
"The visual workflow aspect of Apache NiFi is an invaluable feature as it operates on a no-code platform that allows for easy drag-and-drop pipeline construction."
"The user interface is good and makes it easy to design very popular workflows."
"Visually, this is a good product."
"The OEM Solution (Excel-medical.com) running on top of IBM Streams provides real-time clinical algorithms that can give better insight into the patient's acuity, thus cutting off time to discharge patients and inversely making sure that sick patients don't get discharged until ready."
"As a result, the TELCO company was able to cut down the time it took to respond to customer needs and there were fewer complaints."
"The product has enabled us to create solutions to client problems that would have either been impossible or very expensive/difficult using other technologies."
"Easy development and deployment, Java implementation features, and the real time analyser and alarm function are the most valuable features for us."
 

Cons

"There are some claims that NiFi is cloud-native but we have tested it, and it's not."
"I think the UI interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"I would suggest continuous improvements regarding the custom developer-built processors, as many times the errors that arise are not useful."
"Scalability for Apache NiFi is a problem; it does not scale as well as other Spark solutions."
"We run many jobs, and there are already large tables. When we do not control NiFi on time, all reports fail for the day. So it's pretty slow to control, and it has to be improved."
"Apache NiFi is a very good tool, but there is room for improvement."
"Most of our data is binary and we frequently must write our own processors."
"The reason I rate Apache NiFi a seven is that most development folks are afraid to start using Apache NiFi because, to begin with, it does not always directly make sense."
"I’d like to see a tool kit specifically targeted at incremental machine learning. It’s already great for scoring previously trained models, but dynamically updating models is currently more of a 'grow your own' kind of thing."
"We had some stability issues where we used embedded Zookeeper in production."
"The development IDE sometimes crashes and freezes."
"The price and versatility of this product need to improve - it is not inexpensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."
"I used the tool's free version."
"We use the free version of Apache NiFi."
"The solution is open-source."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache NiFi?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was fine, as the integration with the AWS Marketplace was very good. The pricing in Italy is considered a little bit high, but the product is ...
What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?
Improvements can be made in the way of the UI. From the deployment perspective, Git configurations are available in 2.6 versions and 2.0 and later versions of Apache NiFi. Before 2.0, templates had...
What is your primary use case for Apache NiFi?
Apache NiFi is used to fetch data from different sources and ingest it into different destinations. The entire platform depends on Apache NiFi for data transformation and data movement. Multiple so...
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM InfoSphere Streams
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Macquarie Telecom Group, Dovestech, Slovak Telekom, Looker, Hastings Group
Globo TV, All England Lawn Tennis Club, CenterPoint Energy, Consolidated Communications Holdings, Darwin Ecosystem, Emory University Hospital, ICICI Securities, Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT), Living Roads, Mobileum, Optibus, Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP), University of Alberta, University of Montana, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Wimbledon 2015
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Spot - A Flexera company and others in Compute Service. Updated: May 2026.
896,298 professionals have used our research since 2012.