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Apache Spark Streaming vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Spark Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PubSub+ Platform
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (8th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Spark Streaming is 3.9%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Spark Streaming3.9%
PubSub+ Platform3.0%
Other93.1%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Himansu Jena - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Project Manager at Raj Subhatech
Efficient real-time data management and analysis with advanced features
There are various ways we can improve Apache Spark Streaming through best practices. The initial part requires attention to batch interval tuning, which helps small intervals in micro batches based on latency requirements and helps prevent back pressure. We can use data formats such as Parquet or ORC for storage that needs faster reads and leveraging feature predicate push-down optimizations. We can implement serialization which helps with any Kyro in terms of .NET or Java. We have boxing and unboxing serialization for XML and JSON for converting key-pair values stored in browser. We can also implement caching mechanisms for storing and recomputing multiple operations. We can use specified joins which help with smaller databases, and distributed joins can minimize users. We can implement project optimization memory for CPU efficiency, known as Tungsten. Additionally, load balancing, checkpointing, and schema evaluation are areas to consider based on performance and bottlenecks. We can use Bugzilla tools for tracking and Splunk to monitor the performance of process systems, utilization, and performance based on data frames or data sets.
reviewer2714190 - PeerSpot reviewer
freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers a seamless way to decouple applications, providing impressive performance and flexibility
Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka. That's the only concern I can mention; otherwise, it was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Apache Spark Streaming's integration with Anaconda and Miniconda with Python, I interact with databases using data frames or data sets in micro versions and create solutions based on business expectations for decision-making, logistic regression, linear regression, or machine learning which provides image or voice record and graphical data for improved accuracy."
"Apache Spark Streaming's most valuable feature is near real-time analytics. The developers can build APIs easily for a code-steaming pipeline. The solutions have an ecosystem of integration with other stock services."
"With Apache Spark Streaming's integration with Anaconda and Miniconda with Python, I interact with databases using data frames or data sets in micro versions and create solutions based on business expectations for decision-making, logistic regression, linear regression, or machine learning which provides image or voice record and graphical data for improved accuracy."
"For Apache Spark Streaming, the feature I appreciated most is that it provides live data delivery; additionally, it provides the capability to send a larger amount of data in parallel."
"The platform’s most valuable feature for processing real-time data is its ability to handle continuous data streams."
"As an open-source solution, using it is basically free."
"The main benefits of Apache Spark Streaming include cost savings, time savings, and efficiency improvements about data storage."
"Apache Spark Streaming has features like checkpointing and Streaming API that are useful."
"The best features of PubSub+ Platform include being highly scalable, allowing us to handle billions and billions of events, and configuring and managing PubSub+ Platform is straightforward and simple while being highly reliable."
"We like the seamless flexibility in protocol exchange offering without writing a code."
"The event portal and the diversity of deployment options in a hybrid landscape are the most valuable features."
"Some valuable features include reconnecting topics, placing queues, and direct connections to MongoDB. The platform provides a dashboard to monitor the status of messages, such as how many have been processed or delivered, which is helpful for tracking performance."
"When it comes to granularity, you can literally do anything regarding how the filtering works."
"This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker."
"When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the install was seamless with no issues."
"The valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the speed of processing, publishing, and consumption."
 

Cons

"It was resource-intensive, even for small-scale applications."
"The initial setup is quite complex."
"While it is reliable, there are some issues with Apache Spark Streaming as it is not 100% reliable."
"The downside is when you have this the other way around in the columns, it becomes really hard to use."
"The cost and load-related optimizations are areas where the tool lacks and needs improvement."
"The solution itself could be easier to use."
"The service structure of Apache Spark Streaming can improve. There are a lot of issues with memory management and latency. There is no real-time analytics. We recommend it for the use cases where there is a five-second latency, but not for a millisecond, an IOT-based, or the detection anomaly-based. Flink as a service is much better."
"In terms of improvement, the UI could be better."
"The integrations could improve in PubSub+ Event Broker."
"The section on observability pertains to understanding the functioning of an event crash. Instead of focusing on how the crash occurs, attention is given to the observable aspects, such as a memory pipeline where one person pushes messages and another reads them. However, this pipeline often encounters issues, such as the reader being unavailable, causing the system to become stuck and preventing the messages from moving forward. This can lead to the pipeline being permanently stalled."
"It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."
"The ease of management could be approved. The GUI is very good, but to configure and manage these devices programmatically in the software version is not easy. For example, if I would like to spin up a new software broker, then I could in theory use the API, but it would require a considerable amount of development effort to do so. There should be a tool, or something that Solace supports, that we could use for this, e.g., a platform like Terraform where we could use infrastructure as code to configure our source appliances."
"For improvements, I would suggest increasing the max payload size to a limit of 100MB or more. The current max payload size is limited to 5MB."
"One of the areas of improvement would be if we could tell the story a bit better about what an event mesh does or why an event mesh is foundational to a large enterprise that has a wide diversity of applications that are homegrown and a small number off the shelf."
"A challenge we currently have is Solace's ability to integrate with single sign-on in our Active Directory and other single sign-on tools and platforms that any company would have. It's important for the platforms to work. Typically, they support only LDAP-based connectivity to our SQL Servers."
"The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spark is an affordable solution, especially considering its open-source nature."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, or not cost-effective, and ten is cheap, I rate the price a seven."
"People pay for Apache Spark Streaming as a service."
"I was using the open-source community version, which was self-hosted."
"The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager."
"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."
"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."
"I would rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten."
"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."
"It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Healthcare Company
6%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Spark Streaming?
Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark Streaming?
One of the improvements we need is in Spark SQL and the machine learning library. I don't think there is too much to work on, but the issue is when we want to use machine learning, we always need t...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark Streaming?
We work with Apache Spark Streaming for our project because we use that as one of the landing data sources, and we work with it to ensure we can get all of the data before it goes through our data ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PubSub+ Event Broker?
I do not know about the pricing of PubSub+ Platform because I did not manage the instance.
What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?
Additional in-line information about certain things on PubSub+ Platform could be more beneficial for new users who are just starting to use this technology. The analytics tools integrated within Pu...
What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?
I describe the main use cases for PubSub+ Platform as wanting to use it as a messaging queue pipeline for managing the data stream events in our IoT platform while I was working at an IoT-based com...
 

Also Known As

Spark Streaming
PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, eBay Inc.
FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet 
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark Streaming vs. PubSub+ Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.