Apache NiFi vs IBM Streams comparison

The compared Apache and IBM solutions aren't in the same category. Apache is ranked #7 in CS , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 9.3% mindshare in the category. IBM is ranked #22 in SA , and holds a 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Apache NiFi

Read 22 Apache NiFi reviews

1,888 Views
1,284 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM Streams

Read 5 IBM Streams reviews

672 Views
511 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Apache NiFi

IBM Streams

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Apache NiFi and IBM Streams based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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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:

Categories and Ranking

Apache NiFi

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Compute Service (7th)

IBM Streams

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

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 9.3%, up 7.8% compared to last year.
IBM Streams, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 1.8% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.

Compute Service Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Apache NiFi	9.3%
Amazon EC2	12.5%
AWS Lambda	12.0%
Other	66.2%

Compute Service

Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM Streams	1.8%
Apache Flink	10.9%
Databricks	9.0%
Other	78.3%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

Yamini Vadlamudi

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.

Read full review

Ahmed_Emad

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Apache NiFi speeds up ingestion pipelines development, and ingestion pipelines that usually took a week to develop can now be developed in a couple of days."

"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 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."

"It's an automated flow, where you can build a flow from source to destination, then do the transformation in between."

"The initial setup is very easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, where one point is difficult, and ten points are easy."

"Apache NiFi has positively impacted my organization as it continually improves functionality and throughput with each iteration over the past three years."

"Apache NiFi is the heart of data ingestion for the entire platform and tremendously makes the platform reliable and useful for customers without crossing any SLAs."

"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."

More Apache NiFi pros

"Easy development and deployment, Java implementation features, and the real time analyser and alarm function are the most valuable features for us."

"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."

"The product has enabled us to create solutions to client problems that would have either been impossible or very expensive/difficult using other technologies."

"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."

Cons

"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."

"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."

"Apache NiFi is a very good tool, but there is room for improvement."

"I would suggest continuous improvements regarding the custom developer-built processors, as many times the errors that arise are not useful."

"There is room for improvement in integration with SSO. For example, NiFi does not have any integration with SSO. And if I want to give some kind of rollback access control across the organization. That is not possible."

"More features must be added to the product."

"There are some claims that NiFi is cloud-native but we have tested it, and it's not."

"The use case templates could be more precise to typical business needs."

More Apache NiFi cons

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."

"The solution is open-source."

"We use the free version of Apache NiFi."

"I used the tool's free version."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

University

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	18

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 ...

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What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?

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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

AWS Lambda vs Apache NiFi

Compared 17% of the time

Apache Spark vs Apache NiFi

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs Apache NiFi

Compared 14% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Apache NiFi

Compared 9% of the time

Zadara vs Apache NiFi

Compared 7% of the time

More Apache NiFi Competitors

Confluent vs IBM Streams

Compared 23% of the time

Apache Flink vs IBM Streams

Compared 19% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs IBM Streams

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Stream Analytics vs IBM Streams

Compared 14% of the time

StreamAnalytix vs IBM Streams

Compared 10% of the time

More IBM Streams Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apache NiFi

March 2026

Download Apache NiFi product report

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

March 2026

Download IBM Streams product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM InfoSphere Streams

Overview

Apache NiFi is an easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data. It supports powerful and scalable directed graphs of data routing, transformation, and system mediation logic.

Apache

IBM Streams is an advanced analytic platform that allows user-developed applications to quickly ingest, analyze and correlate information as it arrives from thousands of data stream sources. The solution can handle very high data throughput rates, up to millions of events or messages per second. Streams helps you analyze data in motion, simplify development of streaming applications, and extend the value of existing systems.

IBM

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: March 2026.

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